Change and Finding Yourself

One month from today will mark the one-year anniversary of the death of my oldest sister. I still can't quite believe that it happened at all let alone that we are one month from the day that it happened. The past few months have been rough for me for a variety of reasons but mostly because when I lost my sister I lost a piece of myself and I didn't quite realize just how badly it was affecting me.  I said some things and I did some things that perhaps weren’t the best to say or do but then something happened that I thought at first was the worst thing to happen in quite some time but it gave me a blessing and a wake up call.

Someone in my life who was supposed to be there for me and supposed to help me through things could no longer deal with the pain and worry that comes from watching me suffer from my illnesses and the fact that one of them will eventually take me from this world. I was pissed and hurt and out for blood. As I stated, I said some things were that were perhaps true and that did perhaps need to be said but not necessarily in quite the way that I said them. Don't mistake me, my feeling bad about some of the things I said to this person does not negate what happened or their behavior and fault in what transpired. As my sister would have said, it simply shows my personal character.

The point, however, is that I had myself a slight meltdown and I reached out to a friend I’ve know for what feels like forever and she didn’t hesitate to say “come visit” when I said I needed to get away. I drove on down and spent time with my “sister from another mister,” her husband and their two young boys (the dog and three cats as well). Time alternating between being hysterically stupid together and deeper conversations with my friend and time with two boys who call me Miss Meg and were all over me from the minute they got home from school each day to the minute they went to bed at night was the medicine I badly needed.

Someone who saw a picture said that I looked happier and more relaxed than I had in some time and I realized that yes, I was in fact happier and more relaxed. I’d been on edge so long that I hadn’t realized just how unhappy and stressed out I had become. Between looking death in the face due to sepsis and a 106 degree fever, that person in my life telling me that they couldn’t handle watching me die, the anniversary of the day my sister was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and the looming anniversary of the day that it took her from us I had completely lost myself.

I have a habit of getting songs stuck in my head (most notably lately is "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers thanks to those dumb commercials) and I heard a song I hadn't heard in a long time while driving home. I've always loved the lyrics and right now they really strike a chord in me and it's from the animated movie Cars. In the song Brad Paisley sings the words... 

"When you go through life so sure of where you're heading and you wind up lost and it's the best thing that could have happened. 'Cause sometimes when you lose your way it's really just as well, because you find yourself. Yeah, that's when you find yourself."

The visit with my friend and her family, though cut short due to weather, was what I needed to help begin to find myself again. 

You see, it doesn't matter how strong of a person you are or how brave people perceive you to be - trauma, pain, fear, and heartache leave scars on us - they always have and they always will and it changes us. It may be illness or a sudden catastrophic event that strikes us down or it may be the loss of someone in our lives whether by death or by them walking away from us. Whatever the cause, we are left with scars and we are left changed. 

The question becomes will it change you for the worse or will it change you for the better? That choice is yours and yours alone to make and it IS a choice. We choose how we react to the good and we choose how we react to the bad. We've all known fear and we've all known pain.

Some of us have been through seemingly worse things than others but that doesn't mean that the pain and fear someone else is feeling isn't real just because it doesn't appear to measure up to ours. Never believe that you aren't allowed to feel how you feel just because of that stupid platitude thrown at us every time we turn around: "it could always be worse." Screw that. Yes, it could always be worse but that doesn't negate whatever hell is raining down in your life at any given moment.  

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps we need to get knocked down periodically throughout our lives by people and/or events in order to truly respect this life we've been given and learn not to take so much for granted. Perhaps we need to be knocked down in order to step up and move forward and become who we were meant to be.