Another Trip Around the Sun

This past year has been hard. It’s been one of the most difficult to get through. It has been mentally and physically draining. It has taught me so much about myself. It has taught me so much about life. And while I’m at a place in my life where I still am living way outside my comfort zone, and not where I want/thought I’d be, I have no regrets.

For those of you who really know me, already know, I was a huge daddy’s girl. He was my favorite person in the whole world. So when he died I felt so alone and abandoned. My mother and I just never really had a strong relationship. I never felt close to her. I was a spitting image of my father, looks and personality wise, and it was easy to bond with him. He just got it. He understood me. My mother and I constantly butt heads, and never saw eye to eye. And while I was and am forever grateful to her, as I grew older and especially when I moved away, I came to accept that we probably will never have the same bond that my father and I had. We just weren’t going to be the bestest of friends, that mother daughter duo.

A year later, and we’re still not that. LOL. But I understand her more than I ever have, and I’m more comfortable with sharing with her more than I have ever before. The stroke has changed her personality, and I’d like to think that she was kind of always like this just trying to be a mother and hiding this part from me, if that makes any sense.

At the end of day, after a long day, a good day, a bad day, or even a whatever day I am forever grateful that she is still here with me, even with her disabilities. I am grateful for the time we shared this year, even in the darkest times, I would never take them back. Even when we’re screaming at each other at the top of our lungs, time together is time I appreciate. The most important lesson I’ve learned this year is this: You think you have all the time in the world, until you don’t.

I’m sure I’ve said this before here, and I will say it again. You never really know what’s going to happen in this life. You don’t know when your time will be up. Everything can change in a one second. With one text, one moment, one word your whole world can turn upside down and the path you thought you were on will all of a sudden change whether you’re ready or whether you want it to, everything changes and you’re on this whole new journey you didn’t plan for or didn’t expect.

This past year has been a year of living outside of my comfort zone. There was no making plans, there was no planning for the future. It was simply taking it day by day, helping my mom, putting her first above all else. It’s been hard for someone like me, someone who’s been vocal about not wanting kids, not seeing myself as a maternal type. Having to drop everything and put someone before me in every way has not been easy. There are times I wanted to stop, I wanted to be selfish but I have to remind myself the good things. And that is this, that she is here, and that I am still so very lucky to have her. That I am able to live without a job so that she can be taken care of. That we are still breathing and that we have our health and each other. At the end of the day these are the important things.

I’ve never been good with dealing with change, or going with the flow. After this year I thought I would be, and while I’m not quite there but I definitely have learned to adjust, to some extent. I don’t know where this next year will take me, but I know I’m ready, or will try to be for whatever it brings my way.