Though I’m at a chapter in my journey centered around healing and growth, I’d be remiss to say that everything I’ve felt and experienced in recent months has only been positive or hopeful. Yes, much of my time currently is spent on self-reflecting and appreciating this new power and outlook I have in life that’s bringing in abundance for me (though I still am not sure I fully deserve it). But if there’s one takeaway I could share with you from all the knowledge I’ve gained in the last year, it’s that you can’t have the levity without the hardships. You can’t have happiness without the sad. You can’t have hopes without disappointment.

One of the main aspects I’ve been working on is grounding myself within my intuition — it’s always felt strong, though I never knew what kind of power it could hold before. I just knew that there were many times when I thought about things and could feel them happen before they did. It wasn’t until later last year that I started sitting with that intuition and trying to exercise it a bit more. I started listening to it and letting it guide me in ways that my logical self seemed to scream out against. Because of this, I’ve experienced so many things and felt emotions more clearly and deeply than I ever have. Both of which are extremely important to me; I feel everything. From slight energy shifts in people to the full extent of their emotions they put on display, I regard myself as a highly intuitive and sensitive empath, letting my inner compass lead me more every day.

Like I said, since letting it “run” my life, I’ve had nothing but good experiences so far. I guess that’s part of why it felt like such a betrayal when I encountered my first taste of disappointment after following my intuition recently in the form of a state of depression that I understand many can relate to. For the sake of my anonymity, I won’t divulge details here about the specific event, but I can say it involved a trip I was very hesitant to take at first.

The trip was for a specific event that I was feeling called to attend in one of the strongest senses of “I need to do this” I’ve ever experienced. I would go alone and be alone the entire time. Only concerned with myself; only paying for things for myself. It was expensive and I wrestled for weeks after buying tickets for the event on whether that was a responsible move or not. There are very few emotions I feel as strongly as my own guilt, and every part of my logical brain was listing all the reasons not to go. And the old me would have listened to it and agreed in a heartbeat. But this new me? This new version of myself, who had grown so much, learned to put myself first sometimes, and gave myself the permission to just be and exist as who I am… That me wouldn’t accept it. That me listened to the reasons, considered them for a few days, and kept nagging in the back of my head anyway, sometimes persistently and irritatingly, mind you. I could viscerally feel it; I needed to go.

To that version of me, it was never really a question. That me saw the answer clear as day, as clear as the shirt on my back. That me saw through the guilt and sense of responsibility I laid upon my shoulders, tilted my head up and simply said, “let’s go.”

That version of me was so sure, so I made a promise to them that I’d consider it. And I did.

I sought advice on what to do from friends and family and came across mixed reviews. What I wanted was for someone to tell me I wasn’t being selfish, and some did, but mostly after I prompted them that I feared I was being selfish. Let’s face it, when your loved one is looking like a bit of a mess in front of you, telling you they don’t want to be selfish, what else are you going to say other than, “It’s not?” You need to know as well that there were a couple of family celebrations happening that weekend, and the time I spent at this event would cut into that family time — that’s part of why it weighed so heavily on me.

I struggled for weeks, not knowing what to do, and not yet in a spot yet to fully trust my intuition. Yet despite how at war I was with my own heart and mind on the matter, I was still making the conscious decision to plan and prepare for the trip anyway. Taking time off from work, booking hotel rooms, planning outfits, etc. It was like, while I was so focused on this internal conflict I was facing, my deeper self already knew what the answer was going to be and was gently guiding me to it.

After some time had passed, I made the final decision to go, partly to live up to this new motto I had gained about living a life without regrets, and partly because I felt like I was gaining knowledge on what that trip would be about. I felt I was gaining intuitive insights into what would happen, and the more I gained, the more excited I got about it. I didn’t need these insights to be excited, but perhaps I needed them as a final push to go — I needed them as a goal to achieve in a way. So, I went. I traveled, I explored, I let myself live freely, and I had the most fun I had ever had in my life.

The whole time, I followed those intuitive nudges pushing me into different areas of the spaces that I never felt uncomfortable in. And in every space, a brief thought crossed my mind to look out for the thing I thought was the purpose of this trip. The thing, or person, I thought this trip would be about. But with every glance that came up empty of his presence, a small pool of sadness started to form in my chest. Often, when these glances turned up fruitless, I was suddenly distracted by something else nearby I’d feel drawn to, so there wasn’t really time to sit and dwell on the feeling for long. I made it to the end of the first day tired but utterly in bliss for how free and alive I felt.

There was still time for him to happen anyway, and the day of the event was next — maybe then it would happen.

The day came for the thing I had been preparing for and looking forward to for months finally arrived. I took the morning easy and started getting ready by early afternoon. I made my way over to the place I needed to be, and every turn I took was either met with open arms or small challenges that cleared up quickly. Everything came easily to me as I wandered around alone in this place I was not familiar with, which I took as a sign that I was on the right path.

This day held many amazing things and such strong emotions I never even knew there were to feel and experience, but now that I know they do, I know I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to chase after them again. Everything that unfolded, I felt so deeply. It all consumed my entire world for the night like a wildfire, spreading into every cell of my being, screaming that this is where I was meant to be. And I couldn’t have imagined it any other way. It felt like I’d stepped into another world at that point, like I had put myself into a place I didn’t belong in. But the thing was, it wasn’t that I didn’t belong in it; it just felt too good to be true. That I was there living this thing I never thought I’d get to. It all felt so surreal, and I had to stop and ground myself in the moment so many times to not let myself get lost too much in the “do I even deserve this?” mindset.

It was engrossing, ethereal, and addictive in ways I could never have imagined. I found myself silently praying that it wouldn’t end all night — I would have been happy to stay in that moment forever with those feelings I wished wouldn’t end.

But eventually, they did.

They had to; I knew this. But that didn’t stop it — the greatest sense of disappointment I’d ever felt in my life — from creeping up as I was making my way back out to my car in the parking lot with hundreds of strangers around me facing the same dilemma: what’s next?

Like so many of the people there, I had been planning for this and looking forward to it for months. The feelings it elicited were way more than I ever could have imagined. But I suppose where you find such intense highs, they must be balanced out by lows of equal value. After riding those highs all night long, it was time for the low to come in and ground me in a way I wish didn’t have to happen. I looked forward to this for so long; I had used it as fuel to keep going on hard days, knowing that no matter what I endured until then, it would all be worth it when I was there. And it was.

But now it’s over. The thing I was so excited for and treated like the ultimate self-care package, the event I had been planning for so long and used as a goal on those hard days, had come and gone like it was always meant to. Like I knew it would. But here’s the thing: you let yourself have this sort of plausible deniability in cases like this, right? When something means so much to you, when it gives you so much hope, or especially if it causes you as much internal conflict as this gave me before I relented and gave in to what my intuition wanted, it becomes more than just an event to you. It becomes a beacon and a hope you hold with you every day. It generates little shots of adrenaline and excitement whenever you think of it. It makes you feel like a part of something much bigger than just you, which deep down is something we all crave if we’re being honest with ourselves. And you start to believe, despite all logic, that it will never end.

When we put that much stock and emotional investment into something like an event such as this, what do we do when it’s over and we no longer have it to look forward to anymore? We crash. Hard.

There’s an expression I just learned recently, but didn’t truly understand the meaning of it until now, as it’s the only way I can describe this feeling of immense loss I suffered directly after the event was finished: post-concert depression. I don’t know if this can fully work in my situation, but it feels like the best fit based on what I’ve heard other people describe this feeling as.

As I lay in my bed in my hotel room that night, I felt a heavy sense of depression fall over my body that I didn’t quite understand, yet knew exactly why it was there. I had just lived the best experience of my entire life and I should have been elated and felt a sense of accomplishment at what I had managed to do, but instead my heart felt like lead and all I could do was lie awake with my mind racing, wondering how on earth I was supposed to go back to my normal life after experiencing that? And I even had the briefest feeling in that moment that I would never feel that free and happy in my life again, though I know that’s not true…just because that was the first event to trigger those feelings of aliveness and euphoria, doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that can. And I know this now, and I know I’ll be that happy again in the future. But then, in that moment, I was grieving. I grieved for a loss of this event to look forward to; for those emotions, I didn’t know when I’d feel again. I grieved that state of life that felt like I was meant to live in, because now it was gone.

I tried to get some sleep because I had an early day the next day, but my mind didn’t want to shut off. It wanted to keep replaying every single moment of that night and feel sorry for myself for no longer having this thing to look forward to. I didn’t understand the purpose of this disappointment at the time, and even realized within minutes of feeling it that it could quickly derail my whole emotional state if I sat in it too long. I didn’t see a point in it — I could only see how much it hurt for it all to end. And to top it all off, that thing I thought I was being guided to know was fated to happen that weekend, one of the main reasons I decided to go, didn’t happen at all.

I felt betrayed by the lack of action around the thing I was being guided to feel would happen. I felt high off of the event. I could feel the air still vibrating with energy around me. I felt depressed by the end of something great. I could still hear the crowds screaming in my ears. I felt in awe of all I had felt and been a part of. Then I felt disappointed… and extremely tired.

I willed myself to sleep eventually, not coming into any clarity for that mix of emotions I was feeling at the time, nor did I wake up with any sense of understanding either. I still felt the sting from the negative emotions from the night before, but needed to focus on my next moves, so I tried to stop feeling too much at all the rest of the morning.

It wouldn’t be until days later that I came to sit with that sense of discouragement, depression, and disappointment, more so that I could understand their roles in all of this.

I wish I had something more profound to say here, but what I did come to realize was that we need disappointment in similar ways as we need sadness and pain. We need these to feel the full extent of things like love, trust, and joy. You can’t fully have one without the other, and while I’ve dealt with a fair share of disappointment and depression in my time, this felt different. Because it was the first time I felt it towards my intuition, which I had come to trust. It felt like a betrayal because of how openly I gave myself to it and heard it telling me this weekend would be about one thing, when it knew all along it was about another.

But I now see how we’re not meant to know everything anyway, and how, just like moments of sadness give us more appreciation for the moments of pure happiness, we need that disappointment to humble ourselves and teach us lessons we couldn’t have learned alone. Not everything is in our hands, and we need to accept that and be reminded sometimes that we don’t hold all the power. Though it hurt in ways I didn’t imagine it would, I took this exactly as what it was meant to be: a lesson.

I don’t know if I’ve completely worked through the whole thing yet, but I know I’m at least getting there. I gained knowledge about myself and my place in the world that I didn’t even know before the trip I was lacking in. And I learned how to walk with those feelings of disappointment, to acknowledge them and hold space for them, I figured out how not to drown in them. And it doesn’t even sting that much now. There’s still a dull, vague ache in my soul around the event, but my memory of it is slowly shifting into something life-altering and powerful. I can feel it inside my mind and heart shifting into a kind of fuel I’ll carry on with me the rest of my life, reminding me about how alive and free I felt that night and giving me something to aim to experience again continuously.

So, when I say, “disappointment at its finest,” I truly don’t mean it sarcastically. Because now I know the kind of role it can play in your journey of growth and healing, I honestly believe that if you can come to terms with you’ll see, too, how it’s trying to work things out for the better for you in the end, as long as it’s regarded with a tender and patient heart that knows the difference between sitting with their emotions and losing yourself in them.

The next time you feel disappointed, try to look at it from different angles, if possible. This won’t necessarily work for all cases, or make things easier to deal with, but you may just be surprised by what you end up learning from it.