Open Book

by Jessica Simpson

Still, I was present. I kept a promise I made to myself a little over a year before to show up in my own life. To feel things, whether they were the result of bad memories, or good ones in the making.

I didn’t think I was enough, so I overcompensated by making my life a series of experiences for everyone else.

But then I remind myself that life is really just about one moment at a time. To not think about two years from now, but to think about me right now. Two years from now will figure itself out.

I know my limits, and I had gone beyond them. I was allowing myself to be taken away from moments that I should have been in. Now I needed to turn inward. To live in the moment and not live in the lie anymore.

To walk forward through my anxiety, I first had to look back to understand what pain I was running from, and what I was trying to hide.

I fell further and further behind in school, so that gave me license to give up on algebra. It just seemed so useless if I was going to be a singer. But I kept up with my reading for English, always packing books on my trips. We did a Shakespeare unit first semester, so I remember reading Romeo and Juliet in an airport, Hamlet on breaks in the recording studio. It all seemed so romantic, even though Hamlet was tragic. The next semester we read my favorite, Great Expectations, a book I have returned to again and again. It was even the theme of my wedding to Eric. Just the title alone grabbed me.

Waiting for my life to really begin, I underlined a passage in chapter 29 of my paperback copy: “I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”

The best competition is always our own selves,

“I just feel like I’m going through so many changes,” I said to Johnny one night over scotch. “It’s hard.” “Nah, change is easy,” he said. “Staying the same is a lot harder on you.”

THERE’S A LINE IN MY JOURNAL FROM THAT TIME THAT I KEPT RETURNING to: “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” It’s a quote from Joseph Campbell, who studied mythology to describe what it takes to be a hero.

Whatever you are going through, the sun will come.

You’re the only one who has the power to be the best you, I thought. Nobody else can do that for you.

Give a girl an insult, she’ll feel bad for a day, but teach her to hate her body, she’ll feel bad forever.

Eric timed the proposal for exactly 11:11:11 on November 11. He knew 11:11 has always been a special time for me for some reason.

“Sometimes we are all so afraid to be honest with ourselves because we know that honesty will lead to somewhere.” I wrote this ten years ago. “Can fear walk us to something better?”

I can say now that the answer is yes. I knew that then, too, but I still had to phrase it as a question because I wasn’t ready. I had to walk through my fear to be here writing to you about the painful moments of my life. “Pain is where all the tools are,” I said to my therapist the other day. If you’re someone who has a lot of tools, I’m sorry, but I am also hopeful for you. You have so much to work with. I think it’s important, whatever your situation, to turn inward. So often we turn away from ourselves, and just numb our feelings to get through the day. You can do that with anything, not just with alcohol. It’s so easy to overwhelm yourself with too much to do in a day, where you never have enough time for yourself. We need to own our weakness, our hurt, our pain, and say it out loud so that we can name what is coming up and why. You deserve it. You deserve to feel the heartbreak and the pain so that once and for all you stop holding yourself back from feeling whatever it is you’ve tried to mask. No, it’s not easy but you are worth the work. And if you do not have a stable presence in your life, take the time you need to become that stable presence for yourself. To find that stillness within you, no matter what storm you are in.