If it could be worse; embrace it.

Last night I drank some magnesium tea and went to bed early. Today was supposed to be a productive day. I have so much on my list to do, and it seems like I am never getting it all crossed off. I am not complaining; I love being busy and I am excited about everything I am doing, it just gets overwhelming at times.

Last night I had a dream about Nick.

I am not surprised.

I knew he was going to turn up sometime soon. Tomorrow should have been our one year wedding anniversary, and as most important days approach, I have been anticipating a melt down.

The melt down never seems to happen though, and I have learned through my studies that this is called “affective forecasting.” We tend to overestimate or underestimate our future emotional states to different types of events, holidays, triggers, etc. I actually laughed the first time I read about this because it was so accurate. I have been wrong about my responses to every milestone, and every first I have experienced thus far. I always anticipate feeling sad, guilty, angry, and so on. What normally happens, and will likely happen tomorrow, is I will feel a sense of peace. I will feel a sense of peace, and a feeling of closeness to Nick.

No one is going to believe me when they read this but the moment I finished typing “closeness to Nick,” I looked down at my phone to see what time it was, and it was exactly 11:11.

Today,  Friday the 13th,  is proving to be a very interesting day so far. I woke up with a heavy heart. My dream consisted of Nick coming back. He just simply came back, and I really had no idea where he was all this time. The feeling I felt having him back was beyond explainable, and it felt so real. However, in the same moment I felt this euphoria of having Nick back, I instantly changed gears to feeling complete sadness, confusion, and fear.

What about Scott.

Let me just say, thank god this was only a dream. This is one of the emotions I have struggled to make sense of since meeting Scott. How can I be so incredibly happy to have him in my life, when the only reason I have him, is because Nick is dead.

I don’t see my psychologist anymore since leaving CPS, but I would be so curious to know what she would make of all of this. She always had a way of explaining how I was feeling in a way that made way more sense than what was going on in my own head.

After waking up with a heavy heart, I heard the god-awful noise that everyone hates to hear.

Kota, my dog, was about to throw up.

I didn’t make it to her in time, and she threw up on the carpet less than a foot away from the bathroom floor.

Seriously?

I felt bad, because she felt bad. It’s okay, it could have been a lot worse.

My dogs are always very eager in the morning to get outside and get fed. Juno more so than Kota which makes what happened next even more unusual. Kota is usually so patient, but today she ran down the first flight of stairs and proceeded to pee all over the floor in the kitchen.

Seriously?

My sweet Kota is getting older, and I know things like this are going to happen more and more, and I just have to pay more attention to her behavior, but seriously?

Just when I was about to have a giant meltdown I remembered something that I recorded on my voice recorder just one week ago.

I will come back to this.

Last week Scott’s truck got broken into downtown. The window was pried and smashed, and there was damage to the seat from the glass. His “go bag” was taken and if you know Scott, you know this bag and it’s contents are his life-line. He rarely goes anywhere without this bag. He was devastated. I was too because I was away for the weekend and it made me sad to think that he was at home feeling upset and violated.

In the last few weeks we have both been victimized in different ways, however equally as frustrating, and equally as hurtful. Scott’s truck was broken into, and I continue to receive harassment by a member of Nick’s family. Hurtful, selfish, and endless harassment.

The worst part is neither one of us can do anything about it. Scott will go on to pay the deductible to have his truck fixed, and I will continue to be harassed simply for the fact that I have belongings of Nick’s that must be provided to the estate. Until someone deals with the estate, I can not get rid of them, and I can not give them to anyone. Well, I can, but that will require even more money being paid to a lawyer.

Some how my family and I have tried so hard to do the right thing and yet we are the ones being victimized, harassed, and having to pay more and more and more money.

Sometimes life can be so unfair.

Side note. If you are reading this and you don’t have a will, or perhaps you have life insurance that needs to be updated, for the love of God; please get your shit in order. My family walked away from Nick’s death with nothing but a large amount of debt.

Back to the voice recording.

After talking with Scott on the phone and feeling how angry he was that he now had to take money out of his own pocket to rectify this situation, I felt a pit in my stomach.

In my head I thought; “it could have been so much worse.”

I felt bad for thinking it, because it’s not my right to take away from someone else’s moment of grief, but at the same time I thought, “I can’t let him get stuck in this mess, it’s not worth the negative energy.”

Before I go on to the purpose of this blog today, I need to give a bit of a disclaimer. The next bit of advice I am about to give you is to be used strictly on yourself, unless someone has opened the door for your “opinion,” do not try this on anyone.

After speaking with Scott on the phone about his truck, I got off the phone and had a bit of a revelation. I had a thought that I knew I wanted to get down on paper but I was driving so I did as I always do and I picked up my voice recorder and recorded the following:

“Things happen. Bad things happen. Things like your vehicle getting broken into or losing a job, or whatever else like that. Things that are really shitty, and even if you sugar coat them, they are still shit. Sometimes, in those moments when you can think of something that is worse; embrace it.

There are times when things happen that are so bad that it is really fucking hard to try and think of something that can be worse. So when you have those moments where you CAN in your head think, “you know, it could have been a lot worse. I could have been mugged, or I could have been robbed, or somebody could have gotten hurt or died”. In the moments where you can think of something that can be worse; embrace it.

There are people out there and experiences that people have where it’s almost impossible to think of something that can be worse, and if you have ever been through one of those situations, you know exactly what I am fucking talking about.”

I could barely get this recording out, and if you were to listen to it, you would hear my voice crack and the passion and truth in my words.

Today is Friday the 13th and tomorrow “should” be my one year wedding anniversary. My morning has been far from desirable but just when I felt like going back to bed and saying fuck it; I remembered my own advice and had a listen to my voice recording.

As I have said so many times before, don’t get stuck in those moments of negativity and unfair circumstance. Today could be your very last day alive, and I highly doubt that is how you want to spend it.

Things happen that aren’t always fair, and that make you feel defeated or hopeless, but if at that moment you can think of anything that can be worse, embrace it. Feel blessed for that, and move forward towards picking up the pieces of what just happened, and carry on.

“Live your life as if everything is rigged in your favor.”
-Arianna Huffington-

Live Fearlessly

<3 Meg