Life has been taking me in a direction that I don’t want to go. I’ve been kicking, screaming and dragging my feet for the past year and all the while I have been carried along this current with the worst undertow I have ever felt and it’s taken almost all of the fight out of me.
What I know, what I thought I knew, life as I saw it, has all changed. I don’t even know if I am the same person any more. When I look back through the years and recall who I used to be, who I wanted to be and who I wanted to become, I wonder what has happened to that girl/woman of yesteryear.
Looking back I see bits and pieces of that person I was scattered along the debris of life’s highway and I feel for the tattered and torn remains of the shell that is left behind in this war on life.
Where have my hopes and dreams gone? Where have my aspirations and goals led me to and why did they deter so much from my original plans in life?
So many questions that need answers and so many answers that elude me and leave me feel like I am floundering in this ocean of life.
My life has very few constants in it – there are only a few things in which I can be truly certain of.
- I eat…sometimes
- I sleep… sometimes
- I pay bills, or try to
- I’m certain my husband loves me
- I have the love of my children
- The love of my granddaughters
- The love of my dog Maggie
- I know there is a God and someday (hopefully later rather than sooner) we will meet
- I have a few cherished family members and friends who love me and who I in turn love as much
- I will go to bed in pain
- I will awake in pain
When I started to write that list, I was going to be comically sarcastic and say I will eat, shit, pay taxes and die – but then I realized that I wouldn’t do myself any favors by not being honest with myself and not list those things that I am truly certain of.
Looking at the list, I begin to see something that I had not truly been aware of until now. Maybe I am looking at life all wrong. I know firsthand that when things get bad in life (and believe me I have had my share of bad in my life the past 8 years), we can’t seem to focus on all of the good that surrounds us every day and this makes it hard to see the positive because all we see, day after day is such negativity.
My life HAS had its share of negativity, it HAS had its share of life gone wrong, and I’ve had several people ask me when I was going to write my book (although I still don’t know what I would say), but at the same time, I often think that what I have been through, my whole life, not just the events in the past eight to ten years, is nothing compared to some of the bad events that others have lived through. I guess I have always believed that if I can find at least one good thing that I can take away from each day I am blessed with, than I am a fortunate person indeed.
I’ve been looking at life through a telescope with the lens on backwards, fighting changes that I have no control over instead of making the best of the situation and trying to see the good that can come from them.
It’s hard to carry a positive outlook everyday when you are faced with so many issues that douse the fires of any hopes and dreams you ever had. When you look at the world and all you see is gray, color begins to drain from your life and all you see is black and white – this is where the obvious certainty comes to play – you live, you eat, you shit and you die. That is about as black and white as you can get and the darkness of it all, the view from that position does nothing to lead you to believe that there is any hope at all for your life.
I’m going to stop kicking, screaming and dragging my feet and instead try to work with the changes the best way I can and turn something negative into something positive. Its time to turn that lens around the proper direction and focus on the sights before me instead of at me, because there are so many other views worth looking at, there are so many colors in life and the view is breathtaking indeed.
