I’m a total wreck of a person right now. Pregnancy hormones, leaving my home of the last 5 years, goodbyes, processing the events of my life, excitement about the future, kicking myself still for things I cannot change, missing people, knowing how it feels to miss people and how many people I will be missing soon, being proud of everything I’ve built and scared for it to slip away, trying to run a business and trying to pack up everything. I’m basically between laughing and crying fits at all times.
I’ve been trying to put words down for so long. These last 6 months. These last five years. Just WHOA. I could write a book. I’ve written 5 entries and never posted them. They never seem good enough. The best way I could even express my time here is visually… so I made myself this graph. Each plot point on this graph is one hell of a story. It doesn’t really do it justice but when I look at it, I know exactly what it all means.
I know that I can be entirely too analytical but I highly recommend this exercise for everyone! Think about the last 5 years of your life and plot it out… it’s quite therapeutic! Every single person on this Earth has patterns, both good an bad. We all have a graph of ups and downs. Some of those ups and downs are our doing, some of are things outside of our control, and some are a combination of the two. If you’re not afraid to really look at yourself, you can see it and change it. Those patterns don’t have to control you. You’re in charge. You can identify them and get to the root of why they exist so that you can break them before they break you. That pattern will just keep happening over and over until you finally get it. That’s just how it works.
Doing this helped me see how far I’ve come and how each event that took me down ultimately catapulted me to somewhere higher than before. It’s about resilience. More importantly it’s a visual representation of patterns in my life, good ones and bad ones both. When I look at this graph, I can clearly see where certain people fall in that line. I can see clear turning points. Events that changed me and people that changed me. There’s so much more than I can fit onto a tiny graph but I am so very aware of what it all means. It’s my story. One thing that that I have learned that will suck the joy out of life is caring what others think of your story. The people that really know you and love you get it. As Dr. Suess once said “…those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
I have worked my ass off. This isn’t a brag. It’s a fact. I am proud of what I have accomplished. I had nothing when I came here and it didn’t take long for me to have even less than that. I worked 2-4 jobs at a time while building a side business and acquiring the skills, experience, and the portfolio I needed to do the kind of work I wanted to do and live the kind of life I wanted to live. Eventually, I gathered what I needed to make the big leap I had always wanted to make… And I DID IT!! I did it and I’m proud of the work I’ve done. I love my clients and I believe in what I do. My work is my soul. That is all I ever wanted and I freaking DID IT!!!!
I have disappointed greatly myself too. I am harder on myself than I am on anyone and harder than anyone could ever be on me. For all of the victories I’ve had in my work, I have made some dumbass decisions elsewhere. As intentional, calculated, analyzed and well-thought out my plans can be for work, what the hell kind of decisions have I made in my personal life? How can someone be smart in one area of their life and so stupid in another? Over time I’ve found the answers to that. My little graph represents that to me in ways I can’t really explain to the general public and don’t really need to, not now at least.
At my lowest point, a wonderful man named Juan introduced me to a wonderful man named Tony and I’ve often joked that the job opportunity that ensued not only kept me in Chicago but pretty much saved my life! I couldn’t be where I’m at now at all if that low point wouldn’t have happened. It shook me in ways that I needed, got rid of things I didn’t need, and brought the right things into my life.
The day at the peak of my graph is also a day I’ll never forget. It was the day I bought my car. It was a symbol to me that I had pulled it off! I quit my job and bought a car and I was ALL IN. I researched and thought and prayed and everything fell into place PERFECTLY. As I drove off the lot a feeling came over me like I had never felt before and I began to sob so hard I had to pull over. I was finally seeing the fruition of that hard work paying off and it was the most amazing and overwhelming feeling ever.
…And then 6 hours later, I walked RIGHT into a trap. ON THE SAME DAY!!!! I was on top of the world and feeling great and I was blind. Then, A Little Bug That Went Ka-Choo style, I set off a chain reaction of events which culminated in THE stupidest decision of all that resulted in me getting pregnant. It’s so damn hard to even type that. That’s one hell of a culmination! I mean, really!? Damn. To go from best day ever to spiraling out with one decision… I know I’m not the first. And I know I won’t be the last. Some of us just need to learn certain lessons the hard way. Textbook self-destruction. And what really sucks is that when you self-destruct, you take others out with you. It’s just how it works and its the worst part of it all. Sometimes a pattern is so engrained, crazy things needs to happen!
So many times I have wished I could go back to that day and just talk sense into myself. I can see why it happened and how (good ol’ 20/20 hindsight) and sometimes I just am miffed at how I missed it. But, you get to a point where you can’t keep kicking yourself for it. It’s done. There’s no going back. There’s only going forward… and it’s not like going forward is bad! Having the opportunity to bring a life into the world isn’t a punishment!!! It’s a consequence to an action but of all the things that could have happened as a consequence, of all the ways to learn the lesson, that’s one of the best outcomes I can think of! It’s a whole new adventure with high points yet to come even higher than I’ve ever known or can possibly imagine!!! And I know that more low points lie ahead as well… because that’s just life. I do know that it is a conscious decision to enjoy the ride or not. I choose to enjoy it. I choose to roll with tides of life and be resilient. I have always chosen that and I always will. I choose to face the consequences of my actions. I love my story. I love this adventure. I’m not ashamed.
I needed this to happen. The fact that this happened is insane on so many levels, one of them being that I wasn’t even supposed to be able to have kids. There’s so much more to it than I can share but I will say this, it’s hard to not believe in destiny when things like this happen. What I learned in the last 6 months of my life is really what the last 5 years had been trying to teach me. This is getting long so I will sum it up all the life lessons with one word: Priorities. If you set your own priorities, you get to create the life you want to live. If you don’t, you let someone or something else run your life for you. Priorities are conscious decisions that you must check in with daily… because when you don’t, you let your life spiral into something you didn’t intend it to be. Priorities are personal boundaries. The things you stand for no matter what. You don’t let yourself cross them and you don’t let others cross them.
These last 6 months of my life have absolved me of all of my lingering naivety about people and much of my people pleasing nature. This is by far the most excited and terrified I have ever felt to date however, with the tools and lessons of the last five years under my belt I’ve never been more prepared to for the next phase of my life as I continue to build my business and become a mom. You can’t be a people pleaser and be a good mom or a good business owner. Your kid will control you or other moms’ craziness will. Your clients will drive you nuts if you don’t set boundaries.
What I am committed to more than anything is celebrating this little boy’s life. He deserves for people to be excited about his coming and not a source of shame to be hidden away. I’m not ashamed about this at all and anyone who think I should be can kiss my pale fat pregnant a$$ 🙂
His name is Jonah. In the Bible story of Jonah, Jonah tried to run from where he was supposed to be but he couldn’t escape his purpose and where he was supposed to be so matter how hard he tried. People he thought he could trust threw him overboard and that was the only way he could learn his lesson. He had to be completely alone in an uncomfortable place to see what he had been doing wrong and to get back to where he was supposed to be.
My Jonah is bringing me back home which is exactly where I’m supposed to be right now. His life has already taught me some of the most beautiful lessons. Every time I feel his kicks and see his little face on that screen I know that some of the best things are yet to come.
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