Read This When Your Reality Changes

We, as hopeful people, can sometimes spend years building an image of something or someone in our heads, only to find out in an instant that the picture is blurred, even faded, sometimes faked.

There can be a sense of falseness to the image we portray of our circumstances and ourselves. This can be damaging to the way we move forward from traumas or experiences, if we never see things as they truly are or were.

It is my personal belief that we cling to this falseness because we are afraid of what it means when we let the façade die. What will we find out about others and ourselves? Does this mean I believed in a lie? Was the lie me or was it them?

These thoughts are normal, they are okay, and they are to be expected. But don’t be afraid to think them. Go ahead and open that can of worms up a bit, really start analyzing, was this ever a reality? Did I only see what I wanted to see?

If you get to a point where you see that your reality was skewed and your perception was off, don’t freak out. Breathe. Accept that this is the case. Don’t try and overanalyze everything from the past situation or relationship within this new ‘frame’. Just know some things, but not all things, may not have been as they appeared.

This train of thought for me has popped up through the lens of a relationship — I wasn’t seeing what was really there. This isn’t to say anything negative about them or myself, I’m just stating the fact that the reality I was ignoring is starting to look different now.

This is the footing you need, though. When you’re trying to resolve the false situations in your life, you have to get to a point where you can finally see it. I will caution that you cannot do this through a lens of hate. Though that might be easiest, you have to look at things as evenly as you can. No, maybe someone else didn’t make the smartest choices toward you, but that isn’t their entirety. That’s just a part of them, a broken part of them, and you cannot fault them for the wounds they haven’t had the chance to heal. But you can decide that you want clarity, you want peace, and that is not something they can provide.

You are the owner of this new lens, your way to see actual reality. It is your responsibility to accept what you are starting to see and remember what it looks like so if you see it again in someone else, you know what you’re looking at. I know that it hurts when you start to see the real truth of a person, even if that person is you, but please know that is an incredibly healthy sign of great progress.

Accepting actual, not perceived, reality is key to this moment for you. This will help to build your resolve toward a new and clearer future. This will help you ground yourself into a foundation so deep you will never have the chance to misconstrue a situation again. You will know what you are looking for and what you are looking at.

So go ahead. Grab your reality glasses, no matter how painful or ill-fitting, and look. Really and truly look. Only then can you accept what you find there. Only then can you find your footing to move forward.

Don’t be ashamed of what you see, even when it wasn’t what you had originally expected. Just know that this is your lesson to learn, your experience to have, and your knowledge to move forward with.

We all wear rose-colored glasses sometimes. The hardest part is knowing when to take them off.