No, Jason and I are still not married but we might-as-well be as we have been together for going on 13 years this coming November, so I call his mom my mother-in-law or as of late, just mom. He'll marry me someday. 😂
Edit and disclaimer here: I realized half-way through typing this post that I had a lot more thought process here than I originally intended so this post will be a lengthy one.
As I mentioned previously, we lost our mom April 6th of this year, and it is one of the most difficult things I have ever experienced in my entire life. That's saying a lot because I have been through my fair share of difficult things in life. I'm still going through a ton of grief and to be quite honest, I haven't even begun the healing process and she has been gone a little over two months already. I'm not sure why she was taken from us this soon and I may never get that answer. I'm still going through a lot of processing, sadness and anger over it. I hate saying that it has done some "good" things for me, but it truly has. It feels so wrong saying that because losing her was definitely not a good thing. I miss her every single day and would give anything to have her back but unfortunately, I can't live my life like that and even she believed that there is life beyond death; both for the living and the dead.
Her passing, though it's been extremely difficult, has changed my life - not necessarily for good or bad. It's just changed the way I perceive life completely. Losing her has made me realize how precious life truly is. I mean, we only get one, right? And we all have decisions to make with that life we are so graciously given. If anyone knows me, I haven't had the easiest life. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are people out there that have had by far a worse life than me - I'm not denying that; I'm only speaking for myself here and what I've personally been through. The purpose of this post is not to compare and contrast my life to those of others but to simply or rather, not so simply express my gratitude to the life lessons that I have learned throughout my life. Due to the nature of the life experience's I have endured, I will refrain from going into great detail about them as I choose to put those aspects of my past in exactly what it is...the past. But particularly, I want to take the time to share how losing my mother-in-law impacted my life. It has taught me a lot of very valuable and important lessons in a distinctly short amount of time, really, above all the different unfortunate things I have experienced throughout my lifetime thus far.
Life is Precious: We hear this all the time but rarely ever give it any real thought and we don't really until we have been through something so significant (usually painful mentally or physically) to provoke it. The term, "it really opened my eyes" is a term that only people who have really been through something life altering can relate to. And just when you think you have it all figured out, there's that next thing in life waiting to knock you on your ass. I have had experiences in life that only "opened my eyes" in the short-term and then I was right back to my old ways, forgetting or rather, dismissing what it taught me. I learned absolutely nothing.
Repeating history is ignorance at its finest. It takes some of us longer than others. "Those who do not learn from their mistakes are condemned to repeat them". You have to be ready to listen and take advice, not just hear it. And when you take advice, you take it at your own discretion - not all advice is best for everyone. Advice is very situational from person to person. I spent a lot of time (a good portion of my life) in a very dark place. I've spent a lot of time pondering and questioning things like my individual purpose, life in general, my relationships with others and God, etc. We learn best through trials and tribulations which when you think about it, is really unfortunate but true, nonetheless. When I read that last statement, I think to myself, "That's sad that we have to suffer in order to do better". But, if you never suffered, by natural human instinct, you take things for granted.
Think about it for a minute. When life is considerably stable and things are going well, we tend to not feel the need to change anything about it by default. It's only when things are going to hell in a hand basket that we begin to feel any actual need to have a thought process on change. We all process things differently. We all allow or disallow things to affect us differently. Something that heavily affects me, might not affect you at all or as much and vice versa. That's really life in a nutshell. We also all have decisions to make that will dictate how the next second, minute or hour of our lives are impacted. In all actuality, we underestimate the amount of power we really have in our lives. Believe it or not, we are responsible for the destiny of our own lives based on the decisions that we make every single day.
I started out the same way that most people do - young and stupid. We all think at a young age that we know everything and that we have it all figured out just to realize that we were sadly mistaken. I've learned that age is not what makes you wise, but what you have experienced in life and what you have allowed yourself to take from it is the true key to wisdom. Despite what you have taken from your life experiences however, I'm sorry to disappoint you, you're still not done learning - you're just simply wiser than you were before and an even smaller percentile more intelligent than the population as a whole but it's still an improvement from where you were before, no matter how small it is. Truth is, you will continue to learn until the day you take your last breath. If you learn nothing from the things you experience in life, you've made no progress and that's just foolish and a waste. You'll know when you've made progress from what you've learned when you see positive results from the actions you've taken to make change in result of those experiences. Being human, we tend to resort to what is familiar and change is a very difficult thing but where there is a will, there is a way. It doesn't happen overnight and often times takes many failures to bring success. That's all okay but what is not okay is giving up. Life is an assignment, and we are the pen and paper writing it.
I'm 32 years old and just beginning to learn what life is all about. Life is full of bouts of happiness, excitement, anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, love, heartbreak, change, loss, gains...all of it. Notice how I listed more negatives than positives there. Happiness is a very difficult thing to obtain and these days, few people ever experience it in its purest form. Hell, it's something that I'm still working on and losing our mom made it even more difficult and deterred me off that path of working on it. Sure, there are times that everyone experiences now and again than make them happy but to maintain it is real work. Generically, people think that happiness comes from others and material things and while those people or things may bring you happiness hypothetically, it's artificial. True, authentic, genuine happiness comes from within. To become whole and truly happy takes a lot of soul searching. You have to find happiness and peace within yourself before any of those people or things can make you happy. You don't have to feel happy all the time to actually be happy but if a good portion of your life is revolved around people or material things as a requirement to make you feel happy then you are not truly happy. If your feelings of happiness dissipate after these people or things go away, then you have not achieved authentic happiness.
In saying all of this, a vast majority of people live their lives revolved around selfishness and greed without even realizing it. We are a product of the environment in which we live unless we choose to break that cycle. In order to do that, you have to learn the art of thinking for yourself. We live in a generation where we are taught to feel guilt for having our own feelings, thoughts and beliefs. This whole topic that I'm choosing to write about is a very loaded topic that I could keep going on about forever and ever and at some point, I could end up running around in circles writing about it. People tend to run around in circles with a topic when they are bound and determined to convince people of their truth, heavy emphasis on the word "their". I myself use to do that. Why? Because I felt guilt for how I felt, what I thought and what I believed which was influenced by our society. You will never, no matter how hard you try, ever get everyone to agree with how you feel, think or believe. The sooner you realize this, the more your sanity will be spared. So why am I sharing all of this? What is the point if I can't change the world? Well, primarily, I'm sharing all of this as a bookmark of my thoughts for myself but if I even help change one person's life in the process, I'd be happy. I wish I had read something like this sooner, not that it would necessarily change anything for me if I wasn't ready to accept it into my life, but it would be a good read anyway, right?
Where was I? Oh right. Selfishness and greed. "I HAVE to have the latest technology...the latest phone, smart watch, T.V, computer, game console, car, etc", "How many hours can I work to get the most money possible?", "I'm not good enough unless I wear this, have that, look like this, have that job, obtain this social status, have x-amount of friend's". Stop. STOP ALL OF IT. It's ALL nonsense. I'm not saying you can't have those things, but you don't need those things to be good enough or happy for that matter. Being good enough and being happy does not come directly from material, it's something that is intangible. Material things are meant to be a secondary form of happiness, not your primary source. When my mother-in-law passed away, I thought long and hard about life. You would hear it from older folks about working your life away to save for retirement, blah blah blah. Well, you should but don't kill yourself in the process to do so. It's crazy to me that people actually choose to work like a dog (over 40 plus hours a week) all their life to enjoy MAYBE 5-10 years of their life comfortably, maybe some people get a little more but let's be honest, hardly no one lives to 100 anymore. Despite not knowing when you will leave this earth, you still spend a good majority of your life working. I'm not saying don't work. I'm just saying, live your life in the process is all - don't forget to do that. We get so lost in the idea of making money or obtaining some unrealistic idea of status that before we know it, our whole life flashes before our eyes. When's the last time you thought about a celebrity that has passed away unless you seen a movie, music video, Facebook post or article about them? Be honest. You haven't. We all end up in the same dirt when we die, and that dirt is no richer or poorer than the dirt the next person is buried in.
What is the point of all of this? LIVE YOUR DOGGONE LIFE WHILE YOU'RE ALIVE - the younger you start, the better. Be kind to others. Think for yourself! Stop and smell the roses, literally. Unplug. Go outside and watch the grass grow and soak up the sun. Make time for yourself but also make time for others. Go to work and make money to live but don't kill yourself doing so. Don't compare yourself to other people. Take chances and make changes. Take your time - you're on no one else's schedule. Do your best to become the best version of yourself a little each day. You will continue to fail and make mistakes from time to time but be patient with yourself - that's all apart of learning and growing as a person. Make time to reflect and process the things going on in your life whether good or bad and reassess and make changes as you feel necessary.
Let's back up and reflect on the idea that we all have decisions to make. What decisions will YOU make for YOUR life? Me? I believe that I'm in my metamorphosis stage of life. I went through the denial stage. I'm slowly but surely moving through the acceptance stage and learning how to love myself to make the necessary changes in my life to find and define my authentic, genuine happiness. I'm not going to lie, it's work, hard work - but I truly believe in my heart that it's all going to be worth it. And on that note, I don't give a single shit what people think of me in the process and you shouldn't either!
Losing my mother-in-law taught me all of this. She is my guardian angel.
