So after being MIA for entirely too long, because you know, life and kids and work happens, I’m doing my best to get back into the swing of things. What better way to try to ensure that I am holding myself accountable and sticking with things, than by starting a writing challenge, and today is Day 1.
What do I consider to be my biggest accomplishment? I wish I could pinpoint one specific thing but I can’t. I think that’s because I rate my successes differently than a lot of people. When my sister took her own life, I truly felt like I would never be the same. My world crashed in the time it took to pick up the phone. It felt like the ground had been ripped out from underneath me and I really thought that I would never make it through. There were so many unanswered questions. So many blurred details that just didn’t make any sense. But I clawed my way out of that depression and learned to make peace with the fact that the majority of the questions that I had would never be answered because the person that had the answers was never coming back and I had to learn to be okay with that. I woke up every day forcing myself to get out of bed, but I did it. And three years later when I felt like my feet were finally firmly on the ground and like there might have been a light at the end of the tunnel, tragedy struck again.
I received a phone call that my mom had a massive heart attack in the middle of the night at the age of 42. And just like that, in the time it took the phone to ring, my world came crashing down all over again. My brain couldn’t process it. Hadn’t I just been here? Is it even possible for there to be anything left of me to break? But indeed, there was. It was happening again. My world crashing around me and I was drowning directly in the center. This was my mom. My best friend. The person I called 20 times a day to talk about everything and nothing. How was I supposed to be expected to go on living? I didn’t know how to face a world without the two people who taught me everything and molded me into the person I was. At the time my mom died, I was only 21. I had been married and living on my own since I was 18, but I still felt like I didn’t know how to be an adult and how the hell was I supposed to learn. I have all the respect in the world for my ex husband for putting up with me during the aftermath of those two life altering changes. I was hard to deal with for a long time after that because I didn’t know how to process my grief and looking back at it now I don’t think I wanted to. I wanted everyone around me to feel as bad as I did. It’s not something that I’m proud of now but at the time, I didn’t care. This went on for over a year, and then one day I woke up and decided that this wasn’t fair to my family and that I was being selfish. None of my behavior was going to bring them back. So I fought. Every single day, I fought. To eat, to get out of bed, to leave the house, to have a conversation other than the grunts that had become normal between my husband and I. But I did it. Slowly, but I got it done. It’s been 15 years that my sister has been gone and 12 for my mom. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of them or something doesn’t happen that I want to call and tell them about. I don’t think that will ever go away. But the fact that I made it through what I literally thought would kill me, is by far what I consider to be my greatest accomplishment.
LIFE OVERLOAD 