I Choose

Okay. Take two.

On 24 June 2018, at 10:31am (Sunday), my longest friend, Holley, died from cancer.

She spent a year battling leukemia.
She had just turned 37 a mere few days prior.
A few days before her birthday, she was given three weeks.
She got nine days.
Nine.
Not enough.

I cannot fathom my reaction if my doctor told me that I had only a few weeks to live (or a few years for that matter). I get this deep gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach and then an overwhelming despair settles upon my shoulders.

Holley had posted a picture of herself not long after finding out. I could see and feel her pain and it wrecked me. It still wrecks me. And to know that she is gone, forever, is still a concept that is hard to comprehend.

Holley and I met in the third grade.
We grew up together on “the mountain”.
She adored life and had a passion for animals. Especially dogs and pigs (the pigs might have been an earlier in life phase).
Holley was the most boy crazy person I had ever met.
She was the one who dyed my hair black promising that it wasn’t permanent.
IT WAS.
She was the first and only person to shave my head.
My first taste of tequila (tequila rose to be specific) was with her.
My first attempt at online dating was a double with her (safety in numbers, y’all).
My first (and last) time clubbing was with her.
We hung out the night before she left for the navy.
She was with me when I got my first tattoo.

The above is only a tiny snippet of memories I have of us. I wanted to write them down in order to preserve them.

It had been too many years since I saw her face-to-face. And now… it will never happen again. This has left me in an odd limbo. Because I hadn’t seen her in years, the separation is already there. However, this past week, as I listened to music, basked in the sunlight, walked my dog, gazed up at the moon, and laughed, I was reminded that Holley will never get to do any of these things again. I am saddened greatly because of it.

An inevitable fact: everyone dies.
We still have a choice to make: To simply exist in this world, or to truly live life.

I choose life.
I choose love.
I choose adventure.
I choose to be thankful.
I choose to work hard.
I choose to change the world.
I choose to appreciate the little things.
I choose to live as much as I can for as long as I can.

 

Holley,

I hope you found some sort of peace in the end.
I truly hope there is life beyond death.

I miss you.

Always,

Gone: The Unknown

Death.
Deleted.
Cease to exist.
Become nothing.
Exterminated.
Go nowhere.
Black.
Empty.
Hollow.
Gone.

Death was so much easier when I believed in god. I just needed to accept Jesus into my heart as my lord and savior…. Be a good person… help others and eventually, when I die, I’ll go to heaven. Easy as that, life goes on after death.

Damn appealing, right? When things sounds too good to be true, they usually are.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to believe in god. Desperately. Truly.
I want to believe in heaven, whole-heartedly.
I hate (and struggle with) the idea of only existing in memories.

Because memories fade.
Information is distorted.
Lost in translation.
Gone.

Why don’t I believe? I have no proof.

I cannot just believe in something because I want to ease my stress and suffering in life.
I cannot just believe in something because it would alleviate my fears of the unknown.

The unknown.

That’s the thing about death. By the time you know anything, it is already too late.

I’ve been lucky most of my life when it comes to dealing with death:

I lost my Nana when I was seven. At that age, I didn’t understand the concept of death. I lost my Grandpop when I was almost 13. He lived across the country. What bothered me more than anything was my father’s refusal of me going back to see him and say goodbye before he passed (we knew he was sick). I lost two friends/acquaintances a few years back, but we were never close and it never really sunk in that they were gone, just that we didn’t talk anymore. A few years back, apparently my Aunt Karen died to something alcohol related. I hadn’t seen her in almost 30 years and never talked to her in all of those years so there was zero emotion attached to her death. Don’t get me wrong, the deaths meant something to me, I just felt nothing.

I have spent years mastering the art of shoving my feelings back down my throat instead of facing reality and actually dealing with my emotions.

How do you reverse 20+ years of habits? Great question. Nope, I don’t know the answer yet.

My fear is that if I let even one emotion in, it’s going to first overwhelm me, and then consume me. I don’t want to live with this kind of fear, but damn, that is scary.

I’ve been told that everyone processes grief differently. I don’ t know what my process is yet, so for now, I’m just going to write. My words may be aimless for a time. I don’t know how this works, so I’m just going to dive right in.

* deep breath *

Yeah… I don’t know if I can do this.

The In-Between

Friday’s are interesting for me. I have a half day at my main job working from 6am until 10am. After that, I have from 10am-6pm free and then I work job #2 from 6pm-11pm-ish. I have been struggling to make this middle eight hours productive. I repeatedly tell myself, “Well, I work two jobs this days, I can use this middle eight hours to goof off and do what I want,” however, I believe it is truly a wasted potential productivity time.

Do I believe I deserve time to just chill and relax? Absolutely. But how can I organize my time better to be more productive (even by half). For me, it’s setting daily goals. I always work on these the night before. I write a list of all of my must accomplishes (working which job and when, reminding myself to eat, etc), but I also include things that I would like to accomplish (dishes, reading x amount of pages in a certain text, laundry, etc).

When I complete a task and check that off of my list, it makes me feel good. Knowing that I’m accomplishing my goals, it provides a natural high.

Do I complete everything on the list everyday? Not even close. But the more I complete, the better I feel. It also gives my day focus in such a way that I want to accomplish these things. I could easily spend the day binge watching shows. That used to be me all of the time, and I no longer want that for my life.

Don’t get me wrong. I do binge watch. I do eat junk on occasion. I do all of the fun things. But I also get far more accomplished in a day than I used to.

Today’s in-between consisted a little more of a rejuvenation day. Working two jobs is tough, but it’s not impossible and I’m proving that. I worked through most of my reading for The Two Towers today, and I took a much needed nap. I was going to play computer games for the next hour before my final job of the day, but decided to write instead. (Yay me!)

Figure out what you want and then figure out how you can accomplish it. It’s amazing how much time we spend doing nothing. And it almost never makes us truly happy.

Happiness is my goal. Being debt free is my goal. Tapping into my true potential is my goal.

What’s yours?

 

 

Until next time,

Shut Up and Write

Okay. I don’t actually want to be here right now. I haven’t been writing regularly in several months and getting back into it is torture. I don’t know what to say, or if I truly have anything worth speaking about. What am I passionate about? What do I stand for? What do I believe in? These are all incredibly difficult questions that I simply do not have a complete answer to. So for now, I’m going to write freely about whatever is in my head, and hopefully over time I will discover a passion and a purpose for myself.

I don’t think I’m lost, I just haven’t truly found myself. I know to some that may seem like the same thing, but for me… it’s not.

Since I was a teenager, I would write poetry to express my emotions that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing with the world. It has been few and far between that I have written poetry since those years, but I still appreciate it and hope to go back to it someday.

I’ve been working through an incredible reading challenge for 2018. My initial new years resolution was to read 24 books in 2018. I’m approaching 50 now, which is nearly to my second goal of 52 books this year. I have seriously impressed myself on this front and I feel as though I am a better reader and communicator because of it.

My friend Alice and I started the Badassery Book Club (BBC for short) earlier this year and we are currently working through the Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien (Will finish book 3 of 6 next week) and the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. We’re currently on book two, Shadow of Night. Okay, I’m on book two. Alice is waiting until I’m halfway through to begin her reading, because she reads much faster than I do! After these trilogies, we have another two part book pairing planned, and then I don’t know what else. We will decide once we get closer to the time.

My other New Years resolution is simply this, writing. I have faltered a lot this year, but happy to start getting back into writing, and blogging my thoughts. If you’ve made it this far, HI! You’re the best.

One other major things going on in life right now is that my husband Steve and I are working to pay off all of our debt (we have plans beyond that that include both Europe, and adoption children… in that order). We have both picked up second jobs outside of our full-time work. We’re delivering pizza three nights a week. It is harder than I imagined it would be.

I cannot begin to express how utterly tired I am all the time. ALL. THE. TIME!

 

Kaylee (dog) and Inara (cat) get along great. Inara will be a year next month and in November, Kaylee will be two. Having animals has been challenging and so emotionally rewarding. I’m excited for the mini-humans next!

 

 

Until next time,

 

PS. I’ve totally started watching Doctor Who (for the first time in my life)!