I think I'm sick of people trying to own "hard". I mean, everyone in the world knows hard. At some point, every.single.one of us has thought that life, and whatever particular experience we were dealing with in that moment, was hard. You know what? We were right. Every time we felt that or thought that, we were right. Regardless of what it was we were dealing with, and regardless of how it stacked up to someone else's hard, in that moment we felt that way, life was hard and we were right. It is. Life is hard.
People tell me their hard a lot. And I mean "THEIR hard" not "THEY'RE hard". Though I am getting a lot more people telling me they're hard now that I've been sporting highlights on the regular. But like certain hams, I'm off the bone, so telling me *that* does nothing but make me giggle. And look to see if a tent is being pitched. Anyboner, people tell me about their hard, and I'm glad I can be someone that they feel they can trust with it. I like to think I'm not the kind of person that would follow up listening to their hard by saying "You think that's bad..." and launching into one of my hards, or even someone else's hard. I hate it when people do that to me, so I try not to do that to anyone else. I really try not to do that. When someone is going through something, and they've *trusted me* enough to bring it to me, share it with me, release some of the pressure of it to me, they deserve nothing but my sympathy for *their* situation, even though I've had hard, I know hard, and I know other people with hard. In those moments, one hard does not trump another hard, because we ALL have hard.
I'm not stupid, I know that there are people who have experienced things that I can't even imagine, have stood tall through some of the worst sh*t I could think of, and through stuff I might not even be able to think of because it's so horrible. I know that. I'm glad that so far, the hard that I've had hasn't destroyed me. So far, it hasn't been unimaginable. And maybe there is someone out there who, if they ever heard my hard, might find it a little unimaginable. But to me, it's not unimaginable, the hard that I've had to deal with. There are people whose lives I cannot imagine. But I get to decide that for myself, I shouldn't have to hear from someone else "you think what you're going through is bad...". None of us should have to hear that. Because it's not a contest. We have to stop making it a contest.
I talk about the luck in my life a lot. Like, a lot a lot. I bet it's probably annoying for some, and if you're one of those that gets annoyed by it, well stop stalking my blog, you twatbonnet! It's not that I've had an extremely easy life, it's just that every time something has been hard for me, I've made it through. Every.time. Even when I didn't want to, or shouldn't have, I've made it. And maybe I'm lucky because a lot of my hard stuff happened when I was younger, a late teen/early 20's-aged person. So these days, now that I've given myself a voice, it's easier to talk about the luck since the hard is farther away. When I think about my hard, which I do frequently, the luck is never far behind.
I'm not going to rattle off a list of all the hard in my life, because that's not really my style. I talk about that stuff when it seems appropriate, believe me, but laundry lists of negativity ain't my thing. Positivity, yes. Negativity, no. I'm just following the rules of basic English really. But for almost every "f*ck you, world!" moment that I've had, there is something good that I attach to it. For every decision that cost me something, there's one that gave me something else. I can't say for sure what the hardest moment in my life was, because I try not to make it a contest within myself either. I do want to give an example though, and if I'm giving an example, the one that really stands out for me is when 2 of my closest friends killed themselves my senior year of high school. They killed themselves and it set off a chain reaction in my life that could have gone way south, and very nearly did. I stopped going to school, failed or got an incomplete in all my classes that semester, which left me short on graduation credits, so I did not graduate with my friends, my peers, my class...class of '94 what what!!! So...drop out and f*ck school, or deal with the embarrassment of being a 5th year senior, and just f*cking do it? I just f*cking did it. I ended up making amazing friends, friends that I adore to this very day. I finally had a positive high school experience that involved actual schooling. And I ended up having great relationships with teachers, which was f*cking foreign to me back then(shout out to Ms Levine!!!). That year, which could have been, should have been embarrassing and f*cking horrible, ended up being one of the best years I've had. You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life, the Facts of Life...
Great. Now I'm thinking about Blair. Which is not the point. The point is, I'd rather spend more time thinking about the good that came out of everything hard. I do spend time thinking about the hard, I like to remember the people I've lost, and appreciate the experiences I've had. But I choose to spend more time thinking about the good, the luck. Out of this tremendously hard thing came this realization, or this friendship, or this overwhelming feeling of support. I let myself think about the hard things, but I make a *choice* to focus on the other stuff, the good stuff that came of it, the luck.
So if I seem happy to you, if you know people who seem happy a lot of the time, it's not because life has been easy, breezy, beautiful, Cover Girl, it's because of what we're choosing to focus on in those moments. Hell, we could be going through something hard right before your eyes, but our focus is on something good. And maybe that good is as simple as being in the presence of a friend. I know for me that's usually all it takes. I have my moments, we all have our moments. Sadly for some, their whole life is their moment, and what a miserable way to be. I'm a mostly happy person, mostly, but that's a choice I make every day. That's a choice. That I make. Every day. Because life is hard, I know hard, we all know hard. But we're all still here, aren't we? So why not make the most of it...
