When some of my friends and family read this, I’m pretty sure they will be in utter dismay.

Yet the current scenario in my country, India, pushes me to address the topic of hopelessness.

Now, I am all for pushing forward and embracing struggles—I always have been.

And I may cry myself to sleep in certain situations, but I always wake up the next morning ready to fight.

But sometimes, life feels like it is a continuous war each day, and how many battles is one supposed to fight in a year?

Currently, I feel really torn—I am back to searching for a job amidst a pandemic because I lost my current one due to recovering from the coronavirus.

Each day I wake up and I miss my routine. I miss the rush to wake up, finish morning chores, and get to work. I miss being the most productive person on the block. I miss all that jazz that comes with being driven.

But one part of me always needs to take a step back and soak in the sudden changes in life.

Definitely unplanned changes—one day you are absolutely fine and the next day you have innumerable curveballs thrown at you.

The biggest pressure I feel is to seem mentally fine and always in a sunny state of being.

You know, people always say, “Be positive. Think positively then positive things will happen.”

What I always think is, “Really?”

I’m sure people who have lost family, jobs, health, and finances were constantly trying to think positively, yet bad things continued to happen. So, where is the logic in that?

I think there is so much pressure to not accept our messes that we condition ourselves to not feel whatever we are feeling.

As of late, I have definitely started embracing my feelings.

Despite living in a sunny city like Ahmedabad in Gujarat, I have my days of utter gloom. I have days where I have no idea how I will get up from my bed. I have days I feel I will not see my life on track again. I have days I accept my losses.

I have days where I don’t pretend.

Mind you, these days are ugly, and I feel like there is nothing on earth that can fix this.

But then, a miracle happens:

I feel whatever I want to, and slowly, I start coming out of the dark, and after hours of sitting and wondering into space, I actually begin to see that what I do have with me is now.

I remember my faith, my family, my friends, myself, and especially the amount of fights fought so far. And I have this one moment of sunlight where I see my life as good enough for me to get through the day.

I conquer my gloom—no pretense and no forced positivity. I just embrace myself and stop to feel.

Hopelessness is a part of our life we shouldn’t run from. In a way, it prepares us for the next level we will reach in our lives.

There can be no life without struggle—no life where we don’t battle hopelessness.

But, at the end of the day, we do fight for hope and that itself is the reward for every second of despair we feel.

Embracing the bad days are essential to gaining the good days. Always.