By Brittany Davis
To some people, being strong means your ability to hide your pain. So by their standards the more people you have fooled that you’re fine or happy the stronger you appear. But looks are often deceiving. Just because the pain isn’t showing doesn’t mean it’s not there, right? Hiding your pain isn’t being strong. Disguising that pain and abuse, lessening the heartache and defeats; these things don’t make you strong. What makes you strong is letting them show. Taking that pain, and using it to get past it. Strength isn’t how well you hide the pain, but the strength you find to overcome it. Strength is the attempt to try. Some say strength is how much you can take without it tearing you to pieces. Well, I say strength is finding the courage to put the pieces back together.
Strength is letting everybody try to break you and using it to make you that much stronger. To take all the bad things they’re saying about you, and making your skin that much thicker. Using it all during the obstacles and in spite all of the hardships, among all the harassment and amid all the hate. People are going to try and break you; life is going to make it hard. Strength is what it is that gets you over and through those obstacles. Strength is what helps you overcome the hardships. Strength isn’t shrugging off the harassment, it’s standing tall against it. Strength isn’t ignoring the cruel words people speak, it’s speaking up against it. Strength is taking all you can bare, and still having that much more to give. It’s speaking up against what’s wrong. It’s speaking up for each other. It’s not letting your voice be silenced.
Strength is not letting someone make that decision for you. Choose to silence hate. Choose to rise above. Choose to do better. Choose to be better. Choose to fight back. Choose to keep going. You are stronger than you know. You have a strength that is all your own, a strength that will get you through. Strength is doing it in spite of what others may tell you; in spite of how they make you feel and in spite of what you may sometimes think. Strength isn’t letting the opinions of others stop you, it’s using them to make you speak louder. Strength is shining brighter. Strength is never giving up. Strength is knowing that asking for help doesn’t make you weak. It’s knowing that you never have to do it alone. It’s knowing that even through it all you’re still standing. Maybe a little bruised and broken, but here. What makes you strong isn’t always the things you endure. What makes you strong is how you react to what happens to you; how you choose to react , but more importantly if you do. So choose strength, try and be strong. You’re stronger than you know.
