back to square one

So...I am fully aware that this will make me sound completely ridiculous but I'm going to share it anyways. Well, the message itself won't make me sound ridiculous...just the fact that I got it from watching a movie. The new Twilight movie at that. I know..it already seems ridiculous that I could get any type of life lesson from a teeny bopper movie!! But I did...and so I write...

I'm sick of 'just getting by'. I'm sick of my life not being what I wanted it to be. I'm sick of looking at other people and just wishing I could have the things they have. Not material things—things like true happiness, a career they love, a husband, kids (or at least the idea of kids).

I've never in my life been one to just sit back and take what life has given me. I have fought for the things I've had. I started working before I even turned 16...I had been working for years before any of my friends even thought to get a job. I didn't grow up having a lot of things—but I had loving parents, wonderful siblings and absolutely amazing friends. I didn't have a lot but I was fulfilled.

That changed the day I lost my best friend. I don't use Phil's death as an excuse simply because it's not. In fact, after he died, a lot of people told me “it's okay that you're not happy...your best friend just died” or “well, maybe that happened because of the affect Phil's death had on you”. There were people handing me this excuse left and right—it would have been so easy to say “yeah..ya know...I'm really not myself because of that.” But that didn't seem fair to me. So I never gave in. I never allowed that to be an excuse that crossed my lips. Where's the part where I take responsibility? Where's the part where I am accountable for my actions?

If I got to use Phil's death as an excuse, I would never move on. I would never live fully again. It would be a built in excuse for the rest of my life.

I don't want that.

But, as I've grown older and experienced more, I have come to realize that his death did affect me more than I ever thought. I knew I was in the depths of depression after Phil died. It's not easy to bury your best friend. But I thought if I talked about how strong I was, I would be that strong. Turns out it doesn't work that way. I focused so hard on proving to other people that I was strong that I didn't realize I wasn't. I was trying to convince everyone else and, somehow, I lost track of reality and ended up trying to convince myself I was okay. And I think we all know that if we are trying to convince ourselves of something, then there's a problem...

I digress. What I'm trying to get at is that Phil's death did affect a lot of things I never thought it would. But most of all, it affected my happiness. My drive. My motivation. I was in this place where I thought “Well...if I just stay sad and depressed, maybe I can just get through enough of life until I can see Phil again.” (Now, for my friends and family, let me reiterate that I have never once, before OR after Phil died, contemplated suicide. It just has never been an option for me. So that sentence implies me just getting old and “getting through life” until God decided it was my time. Just wanted to clarify.)

I thought I could just drag my feet through life, one day at a time. Eventually, hopefully before I knew it, I would be 70, 80 years old and ready to go. I just didn't have the drive to really live. To find the things I loved and do them. To figure out who the people were that really mattered and be with them. That drive—the thing that defined me before November 15^th, 2004—was just gone. And that, I think, is what really threw me for a loop.

By now, I'm sure, you're wondering “ok...well, what the heck does that have to do with a new movie?” It's not so much the movie that incurred all of these thoughts. It's more so what the movie represents. I realized “dragging my feet”...just not my thing. My thing is laughing. Loving. Experiencing. Smiling. Those are my things.

I don't want to drag my feet anymore. I don't want to stay where I am. I want to be the one running, jumping and laughing through life. I want my drive back. I want my motivation back. I want to be someone that my friends and family can be proud of. And I don't want them to say they are proud of me just because they're my friends and family and feel that way regardless. I want them to really be proud of me. I want to do something that will make them proud of me.

So that's my mission. I'm working hard on finding myself. The old me. The pre-survivor of suicide me. The pre-I buried my best friend me. I'm done trying to convince everyone else, and me, that I wasn't me because of that. Because the truth is: that one second it took Phil to pull the trigger? It changed everything. It changed me. I'm done pretending it didn't.

But I'm not done being me anymore. I'm not done living. I have a lot of things left to accomplish. And I'm going to accomplish them.

How do you get over it?

You don't. You just wake up one day and realize
you don't mind carrying it around with you.