Paul Thomas Anderson knew how to make a movie just for me. He must be some kind of genius, because he did it without ever meeting me, yet he wrote on my soul. Every character in Magnolia is running away from something while trying to stand still, and it catches up to them. We may be through with the past, but the past isn’t through with us. This phrase drags every character through the mud and beats him up until he is unrecognizable. Most of them are still standing, barely, but they are forever changed.

I have been in the midst of that journey recently, and we all do it – split ourselves in two, so that part of us is walking through our normal routine of the day while the underbelly of our emotions stays dormant. Things go quiet, and we take out the beast and look at it, and whether we were dragged through the mud, or sloshed through it willingly makes a difference. You are either a survivor, or an instigator. But in both cases you are lonely because now you are unrecognizable to your loved ones.

That’s when you know you have hit rock bottom. Don’t waste time there. Every moment is a chance to make a new choice, a better one, to climb up from the darkness and reach into the sunlight, to find your people again, to splash and dance, and laugh and remember, we all get lost, all of us. You are still worthy of love.