Mind If I Pop You With My Stick?

As you all know, my life has been undergoing some major changes recently and it has been nothing short of stressful. This was a long few weeks. A really, really, long few weeks.

One night I found myself sitting at the kitchen table and just feeling absolutely overwhelmed. I felt an overwhelming rush of emotion come over me that I know all too well. It happens to me several times a year. Not enough to really drag me down, but enough to know it a little too well.

That feeling that wells up from my innermost place and erupts to the surface in a selfishness that I’m not proud of. That feeling that always leaves me asking,

“Why me?”

Why me? Why was I chosen to be born into a family where I was unwanted from the start? Why did no one care about me in even the most practical of senses? Why, of all the people in the entire world, why was I so unlucky to meet the one man who would spend years tearing me apart in ways that most people can’t even imagine? Why was I chosen to bear a daughter with special needs and a son who would be damaged by his own father? Why didn’t I get to finish college? Why do I have to struggle so hard financially, when I am working harder than anyone I know? Why me? And why now, when I’m feeling so down, can I not pick up the phone and call a mother that cares? Why in times of crisis, do my own parents, the one’s who brought me into this world, not care even care that some of my most basic of needs are going unmet? Why have they never cared? Why me?

I went into the bathroom and washed my face, clinging to the hope that I could wash the tears off and feel better, but as usual, it didn’t work. I sat down on my bedroom floor and leaned against the bed, taking deep breaths and trying to just let the feeling pass. I picked up my phone in hopes of a distraction and started browsing Facebook.  As I sat there scrolling through my newsfeed and reading my friends status updates I felt my own emotions only intensifying.

“I am livid. John is going to be late for dinner and I’m going to have to put the kids to bed myself.” Oh suck it up lady at least your husband comes home. “At the nail salon, so happy to get a break from the kids!” Where is my break, when do I get a break? “So mad, Troy didn’t get a raise this year.” Please, I know your husband makes well over $100,000 a year, shut the fuck up. “So irritated, drove all the way to Starbucks and they were out of caramel. Ugh why me?” Really? Really? That’s the irritation level that sets you off?

I sat there and the feelings of entitlement for the emotions I was having started turning from self pity to anger. Doesn’t anyone know how good they have it? Why doesn’t anyone else see how good their life is!? How selfish and entitled has this world become?

I didn’t like the way I felt.

Then I got to the status update of a friend who has a son who is critically ill and in the hospital. I suddenly felt guilty for my own selfish pity party. Here was a woman who was watching her son die and I am complaining about my life. Who the hell am I? She would love to be busy, poor, and overworked, yet here I am sitting on my bedroom floor having a pity party for myself.

Do I have it bad? Yea, I do, but it could be always be worse. I’m not wealthy and sure I’m hungry, but it’s unlikely that I will actually starve to death, because I don’t live in a third world country. My son was damaged and it took a lot out of me to get him back, but he is back, and he is thriving. I’m not sitting by his hospital bed begging the heavens for a little more time. I think of my past and as awful as it was, it could have been worse. I have been afforded the opportunity to be writing this to you while my younger sister watches me from heaven, long gone, and long forgotten by the parents who were supposed to have loved her. I grew up in the most awful of ways,

I have no right to have a pity party. I am thankful that the lessons of my life have burst the bubble of illusion that so many people seem to float around this world in. I am thankful that the bubble has been burst and I can clearly see the world around me. I can’t imagine floating through life where the only view I have, is of me. I want to see to the world. I want a perspective outside of my own bubble dome. I want reality.

I’m thankful that my bubble landed on the sharp sticks of reality because now I can really feel the grass. I can see the sky, I can feel the breeze, and I know that the world around me is so much larger than what was inside of my bubble.

I want to hold hands with other people on this planet and I want to join them in their journeys. I want to learn from them what I can and I want to see the world through their eyes.

I picked my sorry ass up off the bedroom floor and I looked in the mirror again. This time I didn’t see my tear stained face and cheeks rosy from crying, I saw my eyes. My eyes have seen more than most people in this world will ever see. My eyes have viewed things, places, and actions that most people can only dream about. My eyes are open.

Don’t walk through life feeling sorry for yourself. Don’t base your disappointments and frustrations against your own enclosed bubble view, because inside that bubble, no one has it harder than you. No one has been as jilted as you, no one can compete against you, and since you can’t see outside of your bubble, you assume everyone is happier than you.

Life is a lot happier when you take the time to look up and outward. Pop the bubble and step out. I learned a long time ago that if I tried to compare my life to the life of the people around me, nine times out of ten I would end up feeling like crap. Then I stopped comparing. For everything that made me feel jilted, I would look for one blessing that I had. It didn’t need to be a blessing that was better than another person’s, it just needed to be something I could be thankful for.

I made the conscious choice to counteract my life’s shortcomings by focusing on everything that I did have. As I mentioned in the post “Let Your Soul Breathe,”  a habit is a choice that you have made so consistently that it becomes very difficult to choose something else. It becomes your default. If your natural reaction when you start feeling like you got the short end of the stick is to automatically start thinking of how many great things you have in your life, don’t you think your life is going to be a bit happier?

It’s all about perspective and the only person that can choose which lens you are viewing your life from, is you. I guarantee you that your life will never measure up to everyone around you. For most of us, we will always know someone who has it better than us in some way or another. If you want to go through life dwelling on everything that you did not get, should have gotten, was taken from you, and that someone has more of, than be my guest, but don’t be surprised if at the end of your journey you feel like the trip kind of sucked because you spent all your time being envious of someone else’s journey.

Yet if you choose to pop your bubble and really look around at the world, your journey can only get brighter.

People tend to quantify entire lives down to a certain aspect that they are comparing. “Suzy’s life is so much better because she has more money.” Yea, and now you feel like shit because Suzy has a better life, but you are ignoring the fact that Suzy’s husband is cheating on her with his secretary. Let’s just even take it a step further and say that Suzy’s life IS perfect. That her faithful husband has an amazing job and she gets everything she wants in every area of her life. Does that make your life any worse? No, let Suzy be. Your life and her life are not on the same path. She may hit mountains later, or she may encounter any at all, but the only thing you can control in this situation is your feelings and your actions. Your life will not be any better because Suzy’s gets worse, but your life will feel worse if you view it as worse. So let it go. Get off the pity party bus and keep walking. Take off your jealous sunglasses and look at what you do have.

Don’t discredit all the blessings that you were given by suffocating them out with everything you wish you had. You’re going to step all over the flowers that have grown in your path if you go stomping through life looking at the path of everyone else while yelling “it’s not fair.”

My life is not perfect and chances are it never will be. I’m choosing to look at the blessings that I do have and be happy with them and I’d like to challenge you all this weekend to do the same. Keep a journal if you want, write down when you feel jilted and then follow it up with three blessings that you do have. Open your eyes and look around.