Life is hard. Writing about it isn’t. Writing about it shouldn’t be. Writing about it makes life easier. Okay. Nope. Writing about it is hard, too. Really fucking hard. It feels like I’ve written and deleted this post 763 times. And, I suspect that reading about life – yours or mine or others – is also going to be really hard. Life in all of it’s messed up, crazy, inexplicable forms is really, really hard. But, here’s the thing – hard isn’t necessarily bad.
Over the past year, I’ve learned that the hard things in life can actually be the best things in life. Don’t worry – I’m not going to claim that this is because only through struggle can you find happiness. Nope. Zero. Nope. Nope. Nope. That’s not true. Anyone who claims that is a big liar-face, and they are probably trying to sell you something. There are lots of things that can make us happy that don’t require struggle or sacrifice. Take Ice Cream for example. I love ice cream. Like, I actually love ice cream. I don’t like ice cream. I LOVE ICE CREAM. Ice cream isn’t hard to get, it isn’t expensive, one serving of it won’t make me fat…pretty much everything about ice cream makes me really REALLY happy. No struggle required for the joy that ice cream brings me.
The reason that the hard things are the best things is because they stick with us. All parts of the hard things stick with us. Like someone sharpie’d our souls. For those of you who know me, you know my memory is the worst. Like, the actual worst. Ever. My brain is basically a sieve, and I lose at least half (probably way more than half, actually…) of the information that enters my head on any given day. I’m positive that this is due to the adverse effects of social media, and I blame Mark Zuckerberg for it …but that’s a topic for another time. The point is: I can’t remember the last time I had ice cream. Again, likely not surprising for those of you who know me. I know it made me happy, but I can’t remember why, in that specific moment, it made me happy. What I can remember, though, is the exact feeling I had when I heard the words “Your dad is dead” over the phone that morning in 2010, as I was riding the streetcar to work. I can remember the feeling of pure panic that coursed through my body when I told my husband of only 18 months over a casual Friday brunch that we needed to end our marriage. I still feel the exact physical pain every.single.day. in my heart, lungs & gut that I felt as I watched my mother die of organ failure in October last year.
I could go on an on about other significant and challenging obstacles I’ve found myself facing head-on over the past decade, but the quantity or severity of hard times isn’t the point of this story. The point is that in the present day, when I feel the painful remnants of the past, I’m instantly reminded of one (or more) lesson(s) that I was thankfully able to extract, and that now support me as I make my way through this (hard) life. It’s been a tremendous amount of work, and even though memories of these hard things still make me sad or remorseful or angry, they also remind me of all the wonderful gifts I’ve been given.
When Life gets hard you have two choices. Yep. Only two. Choice #1 and Choice #2. That’s it. That’s all.
Choice #1 – Give up. Curl up in a ball, shut out the world around you, and suffer. If this is what you choose, I get it. Trust me. Refer back to sentence #1 in this post. Life is hard. It will knock you down…again and again and again. Sometimes hiding away can be the best option.
The problem with this option is that choosing to give up is also choosing to feel bad…all the time. And, what kind of a life is that. Life is going to be hard, but it doesn’t have to be painful every single moment of every single day.
Choice #2 – Fight. Find a reason to move forward. Let that reason guide you towards other good, great, amazing things.
If you chose to fight, the only way to move forward (in my experience) is to search deep into the caverns of your brain and your heart to find any sort of goodness that can be extracted from bad-ness (I’m not sure if badness is a word. I googled it. Google seems to be confused. So, I’m making it a word. Badness is a word!) And (in my experience) when you find that little nugget of goodness, it sticks with you. It sticks with you, because in that moment, it saved you.
As much as I love ice cream (and, trust me, I do LOVE ice cream), it has never saved my life. Little nuggets of goodness, though…those little buggers have saved my life. And, equally as importantly, those little buggers have saved my sanity*.
*Some would argue that my sanity is questionable…meh…they’re probably right. But I’m sane-ish…and that’s sane enough for me! 🙂
It’s these little buggers, the little nuggets of goodness, that fill your glass. It’s these learnings that allow you to change your perspective from feeling like your glass is half-empty, to knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite life being so hard, that your glass is actually half full.
Life is hard. For everyone. All the time. We all have different stories and experiences, but one thing unites us: life.is.really.effing.hard. There is no avoiding it. But, making the choice to fight, and collecting the little nuggets of goodness from the sea of hard-times will change your perspective and help you see that your glass is half full.
This past year for me has been a massive time of transition. I haven’t always seen my glass as half full – believe me when I say that I have been down in the dumps having no hope of finding real happiness again. But, I believe that time can heal all wounds; and, I believe this because I’ve experienced this phenomenon multiple times. Time definitely doesn’t heal all wounds, but time has helped me understand and come to terms with enormous loss, mistakes I’ve made, and has helped me make what have seemed like impossible decisions over the years. Time has taught me a number of important lessons, and time has revealed a few “a-ha” moments that have made my hard life seem an awful lot better.
This blog will be my outlet to share these lessons and a-ha moments. Please rest assured that not I’m sharing because I think I’m an expert or because I think that I have it figured out. Bluntly, I don’t have it figured out and I’d encourage you to think critically as your read about my experiences & learnings, as some parts might be applicable to your world and others likely won’t be. And that’s okay. But, these things have helped me. A lot. So if they can help anyone else, even a little bit, what could be wrong with that?
Life is hard. But, there’s nothing wrong with trying to make it a little bit less hard ♥ Enjoy. And, here we go!