I remember hearing it for the first time when I was younger about a fight that I was having with my older sister. I couldn’t even tell you now what the fight was about, but I do know that considering we’re both tauruses, there was some stubbornness to how we were willing to resolve it. I remember my mom saying “you know that you’ll be the one to come around for her. I always tell her that you’d do anything for her. You’d do anything for anyone.” My sister is one of those people to me. If she called me and needed me right now, I’d be on the next flight. My friend Taylor, who is also a writer, recently wrote a paragraph about how I’m the empathetic friend. I show her a positive light when it comes to others and I give other people grace. This has been something that I have always admired about myself, however, I have recently realized that grace can only stretch so far. 

I have spent a lot of time viewing things in a light of black and whiteness. I would hear situations that my friends were going through and would need advice on and I would give them the most rational advice. This advice usually consisted of, “if someone isn’t living up to your standards then leave.” This was easy and rational because why would I want someone that I love to not be treated in a way that reflects how great they all are? Rational. The advice that I could give was coming from the black and white brain but the advice that I followed for myself was very gray. It wasn’t even a variation of grays where sometimes it was kinda black or kinda white. No, this is the grayest gray that gray can get. I’ve been having conversations lately about this gray area. And I do believe that this is where grace lies. Not everything is black and white and people deserve forgiveness and to be heard and listened to. This is how love works. However, where is the line between losing yourself in the gray and finding grace for others in the gray? 

I can tell you after months of living in the gray that it is when your insides begin to turn gray as well. You can meet people in the gray and look around you and acknowledge the rain, however, when you yourself are turning gray trying to meet someone in the middle then I advise you get an umbrella and run. It’s easy to get lost in this area of trying to see things from someone else’s perspective. You want to understand why they did something hurtful, why they made you feel not good enough, a reason for it all that makes the hurt go away. I get it. And I have found that the reasoning helps; in fact, the reasoning makes the gray feel somewhat comforting. Kind of like a cozy rainy day where you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. But unless you plan on making a move to the black or the white side, the gray will get lonely, confusing and damaging. And the thing with rainy days is that we get sick of them….quick. 

There is that saying when flying on a plane that talks about having to put your oxygen mask on before you can help others put theirs on. Once again, rational. How can you help other people before helping yourself? However, I know that if I was on that plane with people that I loved I would be running circles trying to make sure that everyone had their mask on. I know that one of them would have to stop me and tell me to put my own mask on, as well. I feel as if that has been the advice from my people for the past 6 months. I have been giving and giving to other people and have finally woken up recently and thought “damn, I can’t fucking breathe.” I have been sitting in this gray area between the black and the white and expecting the sun to come through. But as you know through these posts, I have been seeing the sun poke through the clouds for some time now. 

I think as hard as things can be in life there really is a lesson for every hard thing. It’s easy to think that each person in your life is here to stay but more times than none, each person in your life is here to teach. It’s not so much our choice to decide if this is a lesson that we want. Of course we want everyone in our life to stay and to grow with us, but the actuality of it is that once the purpose has been served it’s most people’s time to go. It’s not always easy to accept these things and in fact, I will be the first one to say that I usually don’t. I think that because of the way that I love others it’s easy for me to reserve them a spot in my life over and over again, grasping onto the last bit of control that I have in that relationship. I am in no way a master of taking hard things and morphing them into a lesson. But I have recently released my need for control from any relationship in my life. I have walked out of the gray and can say that although things don’t stay black and white forever, I really love it here. So although I highly believe in meeting people in the gray, my biggest advice is that once you meet them there you need to both be willing to break through the clouds and not stay in the rain forever.