The Mixtape

by Brittainy C. Cherry

While he was the extrovert at gatherings, I was the observer.

I took my time getting to know a person. I didn’t open up right away, which sometimes made me appear cold.

Asking for help doesn’t make you a failure.

“Your music . . . your albums . . . your music gives me light. I hope you know how important what you’re doing is to the world. You’ve saved me more than you know.”

I knew what I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her what I’d been telling the rest of the world. I wanted to lie. I wanted to say I was fine and that everything was okay, but for some odd reason, my lips parted, my voice cracked, and I said, “No.” No. That felt good to say. No, I wasn’t okay. No, I wasn’t going to be okay. No, nothing was getting better. No.

When it rains, it pours, but the rain always stops, and the sun comes out again.

You don’t have to stay where things are familiar all the time. Sometimes the best way to move forward is to leave some things behind.”

Sometimes healing means slicing open the scars that made you hurt so much before and examining them to fully understand yourself. Why did the cut hurt you in the past? How did it change you into who you are today? What can we learn from the pain of your yesterdays to better your tomorrows?”

Happiness, gratitude, is the ability to wake up and say, yes, some things in my life are hard right now, but I still get to feel good about one or two things. You get to choose joy, even when times are tough.

Every person in this world has a mixtape of sorts, a collection of tracks that defines their lives. Each memory is a song, and they all come together to create a masterpiece.

“Sometimes family isn’t what we were born into—it’s what we choose,”

find yourself a man who will dance with you even when your heart is broken.”

“Everyone breaks sometimes. It’s a part of life. Sometimes we have to fall apart before we can fall back together.