A Reminder to Fight

I was given the key 'believe' by a group of people, but it was chosen by someone who for months believed in me enough to save my life. She gave that particular key to me in the hopes that I would carry the belief of that group of people with me and have it for myself. She believed all I needed was to believe and to remember that my fight was in me. The keys are given as a gift at the end of a (for me) very long journey towards health and recovery. I was lucky enough to be given a second chance at life. I showed up broken, faithless, and hopeless to the beautiful soul who gave me the key. Others had given up on me and I didn't blame them. In fact, I had hoped they would. I also hoped that the giver of this key would have as well. But she endured my self-centeredness, my mean-ness, my labile-ness, my helplessness, my hopelessness, my faithlessness, and my broken-ness with consistent and persistent love, kindness, compassion, and empathy. I had no idea what my needs were, but she did, and somewhere deep down in the mess that I was, I knew her trustworthiness, so I let her make decisions I would have never made for myself and wouldn't be here to write this, nor ever reach the point of being able to carry belief in myself that I could beat what I was fighting. I have only had my key for 3 weeks. I will probably keep it for a long time until I pass it along to someone who needs to believe in themselves enough, just enough, to get help, or to conquer whatever fear they may think they cannot overcome. The lesson I learned was that I could count on myself, I had the spirit, and the fight to get what I needed and work hard enough to maintain it. The key is the reminder of this. The key is also a reminder that gratitude is on the other side of belief.