Life Happens.
Social media is one of the places where people only share the good side of the story.
This year has been different.
I lost two dear friends within two months of each other.
I worked on the biggest project of my life with dislocated shoulder. It dislocated more than once. My dog came really close to dying, and it was my own research (not the Vet’s) that saved her life. I fought for the different treatment, and it saved her.
I’ve had thoughts. Dark thoughts. Not the kind I’d act upon — but the kind you beg would go away just long enough to have the energy in you to use your George Foreman grill and maybe eat a practical meal.
I’ve avoided plenty of conflict. The fight was not worth it. Keeping quiet about so many things. Telling a colleague I have to scrap work they did because their head wasn’t in the game that day? Paying them anyway when they wouldn’t listen, because I’d rather I pay them to go away than be drained by them fighting me?
Not worth it.
So you keep quiet and you get frustrated. You lose some money. You lose a little more money. You grieve the loss of people you love and try to cry your guts out when nobody is home to hear.
You cry while at work — that silent cry where suddenly a tear is rolling down your face and otherwise show no other telltale signs but you hope that when you pass a stranger they don’t see the long tear dangling there, frozen in time. Then you blot it delicately so hopefully it won’t mess up your makeup.
Then you couple that with fighting back. With this thing I call TRYING.
You know — Trying? Trying to meet new people. Trying to try new things. Trying to make new friends.
Trying to get to know somebody (the same person) and one day it’s this warmth and depth and it’s a conversation then the next day for no reason ghostly.
That.
Or your friends you’ve known a while who are fine one day and everything is fine and the family is fine and their life is fine but then the day comes when they are not fine…and you know they’re not fine….and you get worried they’re not fine….and they know they can’t really hide it from you that they’re barely hanging on, so you try to give them space, and let them fall apart in peace. Then they use sentences to try to indicate that shit may or may not hit the fan at any moment and if you happen to step on the landmine of their life at the exact wrong moment, then, what if it’s your fault?
That. So you give them space.
Then you try to be “nice.”
Which as a female it’s your job to be nice.
Yes, I have been nice to seemingly every single ex in the last 6 months which has suddenly decided that now would be a wonderful time to try to strike up some deal that involves casual sex.
You’re my ex for a reason. No thanks.
Then there’s the distraction. The self-made distraction. Sometimes you think you can do things differently with this thing I like to call “wreckless kindness.”
Where you somehow stumble upon what seems like a lovely person and with little to no explanation, you find yourself being nice to them since some part of you feels like maybe they need to be happy more than you need to be sad and for a brief moment in time you find some kind of solace in feeling like maybe you cheered up this person who’s essentially a stranger, just a little.
You sort of realize then, we’re all lost. We all think we know what we want. We can only speculate and hypothesize. Some of us try to fit in with this idea of how life is “supposed” to be — we try to fit in that box. Then there’s people like me, who aimlessly throw spaghetti at the wall of their world when we’re unsettled and we and keep throwing those noodles until something sticks.
I think that’s okay.
I think that’s okay to not know.
I think it’s okay to feel like you were completely right about something one day, and then try it out a little further and realize you were utterly and completely wrong.
It’s okay to be wrong.
It’s okay to make mistakes, and it’s okay to have false starts.
Sometimes those mistakes steer you in the direction you really needed to go. Sometimes your life falls apart so you can remake it with a stronger foundation.
Sometimes out of sadness you find out who matters, who sticks, who stays.
And you realize the sun will rise again.
That you will see a thousand more suns, find more reasons to laugh, maybe find reasons for somebody to let you hold their hand.
When those lowest points give perspective to your good moments — that’s when you know:
You
will
be
okay.