Category: lesson learned

Look Again

Something happened yesterday morning that really got me thinking. It was my first morning back to work after Thanksgiving break, and I was getting dressed, brushing my hair, leaning into the bathroom mirror to dab on make-up. I was tired, not ready to be finished with our break yet, and my mind was churning out non-stop, harsh commentary on my appearance.

“Do my pants feel tighter? I must have eaten too much for Thanksgiving. Pig. God, I look so tired. I look like I was dug up and reanimated this morning. Just look at the dark circles under my eyes! Worse than a raccoon! Gah, I look like crap.”

I am sure I am not the only one whose internal dialogue can get brutal, right? I sighed, wishing I could crawl back into bed instead of being seen in public, and just then my husband walked into the room.

He glanced at me, smiled, and said, “Oh, you look so good today.”

I was stunned. I actually blurted out, “I do?”

Now he looked confused, like he didn’t know what he said that was wrong. I told him I just felt like I looked awful, and he simply said, “Well, look again.”

So I did–through his eyes, as best that I could. Sure, I looked like I could use some rest, but that’s because we stayed up late every night of our break, spending as much time together as we could. And yeah, my nails are filed much shorter than I like, but that’s because the two of us not only worked in the yard as usual this past weekend, but we also demolished our deck, hauled off the old wood, and selected new boards, carrying and loading them all by ourselves.

No, I don’t look like I just stepped out of a salon or a spa. I have been too busy busting my ass, working on our home, and getting shit done. I know that one of the many things he loves about me is my willingness to leap in, get dirty, and work hard at his side, for him to have a true partner, something he hasn’t had in the past.

I’m no princess or prima donna, and it shows sometimes, like right now, with the scratches on my legs from the rose thorns in our garden, or the scrapes and spots on my hands and arms from unloading rough wood boards. My hair is in dire need of a color and cut, but I just haven’t had time, because we’ve had so much to do. Visiting the kids and helping my husband with these projects were far more important to me, and always will be.

I ended up thinking about that exchange with my husband later that day. Jeez, I really need to learn to cut myself a break! Why would I possibly pressure myself to look immaculate and energized after a busy and manual-labor-filled weekend? I am glad my husband walked in at just the right moment to place everything into perspective and deliver a crucial reality check. I am glad he sees me through the lens of love, and I am glad he is teaching me to see myself the same way, too.

Don’t Die with Your Dead

“Don’t Die with Your Dead” post, Andrew McLaren

The first time I saw this image and the text with Andrew McLaren’s Facebook post, I nearly cried. When my mother died last fall, it gutted me. I was drowning in grief, guilt, regret, even for things I had absolutely no control over. Losing her detonated an avalanche of emotion that buried me, suffocated me.

My husband must have felt like a full-time therapist during the worst of it. I cried at movies, news stories, commercials, or just the wind blowing. I leaned on him, collapsed against him, shattered into pieces with him, that he gently held together until I could do it myself.

Yesterday, the afternoon was just too beautiful to stay inside. I took a walk at work, and I looked up and thought how gorgeous the sky looked, brilliant blue, with fake-looking, fluffy clouds splashed here and there. It was the kind of day my mom loved, the early fall days with cool breezes and warm sun, as summer slowly slips away and autumn makes its presence known.

It never seemed fair to me that my mom died at the beginning of fall and didn’t get to enjoy one last day of her favorite season. It felt cruel. The thought made me drop my eyes to the sidewalk, thinking, missing her.

Then I realized I was making a huge mistake. No, my mom can’t be here to see this sky, or enjoy this day. But I can. Why waste it? Why not enjoy it for me, for her? Why not live even harder, love more ferociously, not only in her honor, but for my own true happiness as well?

The post mentioned above ends with, “Don’t die with your dead. Honor them by living your life as they would have wanted you to. Let them transcend. And you keep living.”

It’s one thing to read those words. It’s something else to reflect on them, really hold onto them and let them sink in. And it’s finally something altogether different to truly act on them, absorb them, live them.

I feel like yesterday, I finally embraced those words and made a conscious decision to live better, happier, more grateful, with intent and peace and meaning. It’s not just for me; my husband deserves this too, to spend his days with a healthier and stronger me. He held my head above water when I desperately needed him, and now that my feet are back under me, I want to do more than merely exist. I want to live. To fly. To love until we are breathless, to laugh as much as possible, to try new things and discover adventure of all sizes, to appreciate all the little moments that make life magnificent, and to never, ever miss a beautiful sky.

Bitter Heart

Oh my, how they change you. Bitterness is etched in every cavernous wrinkle on her musty face, every miserable canyon furrowed in her forehead, every tight line around her sour, frowning mouth. Even worse, it is lodged solidly like a cancerous tumor in her fetid heart, rusting, eating, rotting her from the inside out. And instead of healing herself, instead of stopping the decay, she gluttonously binges on anger and jealousy by constantly, relentlessly comparing herself, coming up short, hating, and comparing again, in a self-defeating, self-destructive cycle that only she can break yet irrationally chooses to lock herself into.

I can’t stop others from choosing such a path. But I can watch. And learn. And choose better.

Cocoon

I have been looking forward to this weekend ever since last weekend! It’s been an exhausting week. It wasn’t a bad week at all, though, just draining. I found myself doing a lot of thinking, reflecting, talking to my brothers, getting so inspired by our conversations…but at the same time, grieving is simply tiring, and there’s no way around that.

After some events this past week, some thought-provoking and beautiful moments, I feel like I have finally started to climb back to my feet. I haven’t been unhappy, exactly, or moping around. I have actually felt more motivated to embrace life since losing my mom, to find meaning and purpose to this pain, to honor her by living my life as fully as I can.

But I was still holding myself back. I didn’t even realize it. After a few conversations with my brothers recently, I feel ready to break free of that. I am grateful to have them, in addition to my husband, to lean on and gain strength from during all this.

I feel a bit like I am slowly waking up from a coma. Losing my mom definitely knocked me on my ass, but the last thing she ever would have wanted is for me to stop taking care of myself over it. So it’s time for changes. A lot of positive, healthy changes.

One thing I have already changed is reminding myself to live in the moment, to appreciate the love in my life, to experience and hold onto every single bit. Laying in bed this morning, tucked tightly under the warm covers, I felt my husband’s arms around me, his face pressed tenderly against my chest, and I melted into the moment, enjoying the peace and beauty of our time together before starting the day. I don’t want to take any of those moments for granted.

My husband and I have some plans this weekend, and that’s certainly one reason I can’t wait for the weekend. But I am also looking forward to this weekend and my time off next week because I can’t wait for down time to think, plan, to retreat for just a moment like a butterfly in a cocoon, and lay groundwork to emerge even better than before.

There are things I wish I would have said to my mom. Maybe that happens for everyone after a loss. I am grateful I got a chance to talk to her in the hospital and let her know how much I love her, how much I’ve always loved her. But I would like to learn from that and not leave things unsaid anymore.

In a backhanded way, I am also thankful for people in my life like my husband’s ex, who repeatedly teach me what happens when someone refuses to grow, move forward, improve, or mature. I don’t get it, and I guess I should be grateful that I don’t understand it, that it’s too far beneath me to comprehend. I appreciate the reminder and the example of the result of clinging uselessly to the past, of offering no joy to anyone, of not embracing life or truth or authenticity–in short, of refusing to actually LIVE.

I refuse to be like that. I deserve better than that. So do my husband, my stepkids, my brothers, everyone that I care about. Life is about living, and loving, and discovering and sharing happiness, and I intend to do just that.

Learn This

I have seen this quote over and over since my mom died, and it’s true: even after healing as best you can, a trauma like that permanently changes you. Nothing will be the same as it was, including you.

I can already tell some of the ways I am not going back together the way I was before. I have always had a low threshold for drama and stupidity, and now I have none at all. The stupid bullshit that my husband’s ex obsessively and incessantly drums up is even more absurd and patently ridiculous to me now. She refuses to move on, to grow, to improve, and the ones she has always hurt most are the kids. But good luck getting her to see that or to give a damn, because her entire universe revolves around my husband, me, our love together, others from her past who grew tired of her shit long ago, and trying to pretend she has something that she never will. It’s pathetic.

I have learned to let others know how I feel. I have taken comfort in knowing that one of the last things my mom was able to say was that she loves me. I was able to hold her hand beside her hospital bed and tell her, between tears, how much I love her. After that, watching my stalker cling to the most idiotic, moronic, and doltish nonsense is staggering. She chooses to never evolve, to remain a permanent failure and take pride in her obtuseness and weakness. It blows my mind that someone can be such a colossal nothing and not want to be anything better than what she is right now, what she’s been as long as I have known her.

What’s my point? Maybe I’m just blowing steam. I have spent so much time since my mom died, just thinking, reflecting, wanting desperately to learn something from all this pain, wanting to give meaning to this suffering. And then there’s my stalker, eternally flitting about like a hapless twit, patting herself on the back for the most childish and mindless nonsense, no attempt whatsoever to advance beyond infantile, trivial, and meaningless bullshit.

Dumbasses are a dime a dozen. People like my stalker have no worth, no ability to be anything but what they are. They lack ambition to improve themselves, so they fall back on playground insults, outlandish accusations, and preposterous lies, as if no one can tell that their words and actions are borne from jealousy, spite, and raging immaturity.

She will never change. People like her never do. She will be useless and miserable until the day she dies. I refuse to live that way. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new, to try something for the first time, be a better person. Stagnating and rotting in place is a waste of time and a waste of life. I refuse to be walking rot like her. Life is too short to piss it away. If I learn nothing else from all of this, at least let me learn that, and live it each day like I mean it.

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