The Key to This Life

Those of us who have suffered loss, tragedy, and lived a not so stellar life are very familiar with hindsight or we never truly overcome it. The point where you can say you’ve been granted an epiphany of understanding the situations you’ve endured, and can grasp acceptance is all thanks to the mysterious and necessary gift of hindsight.

Losing my husband so young, having a child diagnosed with cancer, times of financial hardship… I have lived through them all. At the time, I felt I was "Munsoned" (shameless Kingpin reference). I had very real anger toward God, the universe, and life for beating me down so harshly and without regard to whether I had truly gained footing from the previous tragedy. It was as if I was cursed or maybe my anger at God was attracting it. I actually felt guilt about not accepting my life and looking at some invisible bright side the people on the outside kept insisting I should seek. How screwed up is it that when one is suffering, we are so programmed to develop a bit of paranoia that the worst times of our lives have become a time of questioning our natural response to them? I felt bad for hurting and being, for lack of a better word, on the defense from feeling the imminent approach of the next disaster.

People’s words, despite coming from the best possible places, were not always the right ones for me. The “He’s in a better place” or the “God only gives you what you can handle” were the ones that infuriated me. That better place… was it for him or me, because the kids and I were lost and felt completely abandoned? Was I wrong to be mad at him for dying? Was I wrong to laugh at the funny moments we shared at his funeral, simply because I was tired of crying? Some people actually made me feel badly for doing that. As if my emotional coping mechanism of trying to pull myself out of a dark place through humor was “not appropriate.” People tried to make me feel shame for all kinds of things, until I realized they were only superficially invested in my wellbeing and adopted the "f*&k what they think" mindset. I was the only one who would be forced to deal with it in the end, so the opinions and judgements of those hell bent on finding faults in my actions faded away into the “irrelevant” categories.

I felt my feelings. I encouraged my children to feel theirs. We survived. We made it through the dark times, the empty stomachs, the illnesses, the school years, the come backs and growing pains. I woke up every morning, I faced the demons I put to sleep the night before. I had accepted my many flaws, my "inappropriate" and awkward responses and my new life, built by the bricks and additions everything had required. My "Forever Home" (pardon the Haunting of Hill House reference) had evolved into a safe place for me to live and thrive.

Every day I felt the need to embrace the sadness, the loneliness and the frantic need to fade into the occasional afterthought instead of a state of being. I began to trace my life path and recognize how it came to be this way, recognizing the days I felt I wouldn’t survive as the days I learned the most. Those were the pivotal points responsible for the biggest breakthroughs. The new career I found myself in, born from the necessity to heal, and the days I found myself the loneliest were the foundation for seeking out only the ones who could add to my life, instead of holding on to the dead weight for fear of loneliness.

I saw my children develop into the pretty amazing and rare little humans they are (flaws and all) through their own journey, which in spite of being attached to mine in similarity, was completely their own. It was like watching it from the outside and they were gifted this so much sooner than me because they are resilient beyond their years, from not knowing anything different. That sounds so sad as I read it back, but the truth is I see them with more strength and fortitude than a human should bare and this will give them advantages as they decide who they are.

Through this entire span, the one thing I can attribute to a successful outcome is "hindsight." I look back. I recognize the good out of the bad, the necessity out of the tragedy. This isn’t a lukewarm justification for the horrible things that can and will happen. It truly is the key to this life, in my humble and honest opinion. When you are going through the worst time of your life, just holding on (which will most likely feel impossible) will eventually bring you full circle. You will see and be able to trace the person or people you’ve become through every single detail of your life story, even the minute, miniscule occurrences you may miss if you don't appreciate "hindsight" as the end goal.