5 Things I am Guilty of that REALLY Scare the Shit Out Of Me
That Should Scare The Shit Out of You Too
By: Miss Adventures
There is nothing like a brief hospital stay to make you
evaluate your life. Especially when that hospital stay is a direct result of
trying to lay down on a day you are in complete pain, and end up rousing yourself
from napdom by having a violent coughing fit that results in a blood soaked
pillow. Especially when you are a Stage 4 cancer patient. Let me tell you, that…right
there…is enough to scare the shit out of you; to make you feel like the end is
inevitably closer than you surmised. Like “right now” kind of close.
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| If this wouldn't scare you, I don't know what would. |
Then again, I am reminded that evil never dies…but I
digress.
While this time wasn’t “the end” for my story, the truth is,
not a single one of us is guaranteed another day on this planet. We could all
be called home at any second, for any reason…or for no “good” reason at all, which
got me to thinking (REALLY thinking) about how I have left some things with
some people in my life, and how you might have left some things with the people
in yours.
I look back on a river flowing with regret about some things
in my life. Many of them. Regrets about how I behaved, how I handled certain
situations, my hot tempered nature and even my closed off nature. All the same,
as much as I would like to sit on the bank of self-loathing, next to an overflowing wellspring full of regrets, I just can’t. Neither can you.
There is no time for that.
As I sat there that night, watching bad TV, scribbling
thoughts down on a hospital notepad, I came to the conclusion that we fix what
we need to fix, we let go of what we can’t, and that sometimes the best apologies
are the ones in letters written to folks we have wronged that we never sent.
Some conflicts are not meant to be resolved, some relationships not meant to
last the test of time and some things that just don’t belong in our lives as
our prime directive.
Still…that wasn’t what scared me. I had made peace with
those notions long ago.
What really DID scare the shit out of me was five things in
particular…things relevant to those whom I hold near and dear to my heart. And,
when I got to thinking about these five things, they really did scare the ever
loving snot out of me. Thing is, I don’t think I’m the only one who is guilty
of these five sins.
#1: I didn’t say I love you enough
As I lay there, in a morphine induced haze, I don’t remember
much, but I do remember looking up at those ugly ceiling tiles, hearing the
beeping of my monitors in the background and thinking, “I didn’t say I love you
enough, to the people who I love.” And, it’s true, I haven’t. I began thinking
about some of my more recent conversations…tough conversations as they were,
where I felt like I SHOULD have said it, but I didn’t. I held back. I withheld
that simple phrase, as if I was keeping some treasure chest, heaven laden with
gold and jewels away from a bloodthirsty pirate, out to do nothing but pillage
my emotions. Regardless of what my reasons were at the time, I was wrong for
that. I began to think, “If this was the very last conversation I had with this
person, would I be satisfied with it?” Truth is, the answer was a very stout,
resolute…no.
If everyone in this life has a basic human need to be loved,
to receive affection and validation from the people that they love….where do I
get off playing God and withholding that when it should be so freely given?
I don’t. Neither do you.
If you recall the last conversation you had with someone you
love, is it worthy of being the last conversation you ever had with them? If
not, fix that.
#2: I didn’t reach out enough
I am a complete, total and habitual hermit. If you can
convince me to wear something other than yoga pants and a pony tail on a daily
basis, you are truly a miracle worker. If you can invite me somewhere without
me automatically skipping ahead in my brain as to how to get out of it, you’re
probably the reincarnation of Jesus Christ himself. (Virtual shout out to the
fellow hermits in the house.)
I’m that person who
commits herself to being a perfectly happy loner, because perfectly happy
loners are never disappointed by humanity. Lame excuse, I know, but that’s a
rather deeply ingrained seed of what makes me…me; it’s one of my many quirks.
And while I don’t fault myself for my hermit like behavior, I
do fault myself for not being there, or reaching out to others when I knew they
needed my help, like I could have, like I should have….even virtually. Sick or
not, I don’t have a good excuse for that. There is nothing that could have
stopped me from sending a text from time to time, an email, a private message
just letting someone know I was thinking about them; letting them know I cared….other
than the fact that I was being selfish with my time. Other than the fact that
somewhere along the way, I forgot how to love myself, so I didn’t feel as if I was
much use to anyone else.
Which is still no good excuse…for you….or for me.
#3: I was always “too busy”
This one sort of ties into #2, I suppose. I can’t tell you
how many times I have even looked at my own daughter and told her that I was “too
busy”. Where were my “too busies” when I was lying in a hospital bed? They
simply melted away into a bunch of too busies that never mattered.
I then got to thinking how many times I was too busy…and
there were a lot of them. How many times I wasn’t all in, I didn’t give someone
my full attention. Where was all of that important too-busy now? Nowhere that made a lick of sense...that's for sure.
I got to thinking about where all of my “too busies” had
come from….and while most were birthed out of a bunch of people (for lack of a
better phrase) who always wanted slivers of my time for free, time that ended
up costing me hours in lost work and productivity, I put such a heavy set of
blinders on when it came to EVERYTHING and EVERYONE else in my life, I just
handed out stock responses of "Sorry I'm busy" like Planned Parenthood hands out condoms at a high
school pep rally. No matter how you cut it, I suck for that.
And if you do that, you suck for it too. I mean, if we are
being honest and all.
#4: I held on to way too many things I should have let go of
I am notorious for my ability to hold a grudge. Hell,
notorious would be putting it lightly. When I am done with someone, they are “dead
to me”…never to be heard from or spoken of again. Recently, I was accused of
seeing people in only black and white (not skin color, just interior, thanks).
I suppose I do this because I also see myself as black and white, and there is
no one on this earth harder on me than what I am. I don’t give myself much room
for shades of gray, so why should I grant that leniency to anyone else,
right? (This ties into the loner thing). Still, regardless of whether a
relationship, a friendship or even a mild kinship existed or not, I have no
business holding on to grudges that long. Hell, it doesn’t more damage to the
interior of my soul than it ever will to someone I loathe, despise and secretly
wish would have an accident in a hydrochloric acid factory….anyway.
#5: I spent too much time being angry
The other day, I was floating around the internet reading a
bunch of different things. I happened upon a reminder of the stages of grief. I
got to thinking about why I was stuck…vehemently…on anger. The answer, in my
case, is simple….lack of closure. It’s hard to move past any traumatic
experience sans that one little thing, as much as people tell you to do it, as
much as people want you to do it, hell….as much as you might want to do it
yourself. When the cause of your pain is ongoing, relentless and even somewhat “In
your face”, it’s hard to not stay angry…it’s hard to not hold on to that. In my
case, myriads of professionals have told me the same thing….they said, “People
will tell you that you have to move on and live your life, but that’s a nearly
impossible thing to do in your situation.” Which, kind of made me feel better
for every well-meaning individual who gave me that self-same (horrible) advice.
The advice I got was to work on my sadness, not my anger, but that even then,
based on the intricacies of my particular situation, that would be a
challenging task for many years to come.
All the same, that rage, internalized in me and wells up
from time to time; even completely displaced on folks who don’t/didn’t deserve
it. It’s hard to understand, it’s even more difficult to explain….but you are
going to have to trust me on this one.
Think of it like being stuck in “Groundhog Day” where you
live the same day over and over and over again, not, in your head, but actually
in real life. Except your version of Groundhog Day is the most vile day you can
think of.
It’s hard to not become bitter and angry and resentful and
closed off to the world in that scenario. And, as much as I have tried to fight
against it, I find myself sucked back into rage from time to time.
It’s a shitty battle to fight, and one I constantly ask God
why he gave to me, nights where God has been the object of my rage, Himself.
And, as often as I pray for peace and healing, I seem to only be able to be
ready to handle glimpses of that right now, and not the full picture. Which…flat
out, completely and totally sucks, but I also believe there is something….at
some point, I am going to take out of this, other than some unsuspecting saps
teeth.
But as I was laying there, I remembered something I once read, and something I had said just days prior, “Angry
is really just sad’s bodyguard.”
How do I fix that about me? I honestly don’t know. There might not ever be a day where that broken piece of me is mended back together. All I do know is that I don’t enjoy
being angry, I don’t like it, I hate it, truth be told, but it’s a really high
hurdle for me to jump some days to get over that undercurrent of anger and get
inside a mental headspace that keeps me out of it.
In fact, I hate my temper SO MUCH now that I tend to avoid
confrontation altogether these days, as I know myself well enough to know that
once the angry brews, it becomes like a tsunami in no time flat, for seemingly
what is no reason to onlookers, but is due to years of living that Groundhog
Day moment I spoke of a few moments ago. The really shitty thing about it, is that unless you lived it, you'll never be able to truly understand it...and I have yet to run into a single person who will admit to living it in the same way that I have, for years now.
Still, I do my best to take those feelings of rage and channel them
into my work, into my writing, into my company….because that’s the only thing
that transforms that anger into something usable and productive. Sometimes I
succeed, sometimes I fail. And here's the thing, sometimes in life you will succeed too, and sometimes you will fail. The good news is, that's exactly what is supposed to happen.
Regardless, if you are like me, and you’re tired of feeling
like you came off of the damaged goods assembly line, here are five simple reminders that might help both you and I start making our ways to the shallow end of the regret river we stare down in our dreams.
Say I love you more. Every day, even.
Reach out to the wounded. Because every kind act you do,
helps you heal.
Stop allowing busy living to override intentional living.
Stop holding on to the notion of letting go, and do
something to actually let whatever-it-is-that-you-need-to-let-go of…go. Write
it down, write a letter to that person that you never send, scream it out at
the top of your lungs. Rinse and repeat until it’s gone. Like, gone...gone. For
good.
Remember, all anger is born from sadness. Deal with the
sadness however you have to, every day if you must, until anger knows he has
nothing left to protect. That’s when anger can finally be released.
So…what scares the shit out of you now? Leave a comment
below and let’s talk about it! This is a community, not a monologue, so
interact…introduce yourselves. Start a conversation!
