Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
If you had asked me a year ago what my life would look like right now, I would have confidently handed you a glossy, well-organized mental brochure.
There would have been flow.
There would have been ease.
There would have been a version of me who was appropriately tired and not bone-deep, existential, why-am-I-yawning-at-7pm tired.
That is not what arrived.
My life is never how I picture it a year back. Ever. Not once. Not even close.
Sometimes that works out beautifully. Sometimes, less so.
Some parts are predictable in that “oh, of course this happened” way.
Other parts come flying in like a rogue Amazon package I definitely did not order but now apparently have to sign for.
This year had challenges. Real ones. The kind that don’t politely announce themselves and don’t leave on schedule. The kind that require grit, recalibration, and an uncomfortable amount of emotional heavy lifting. And yes, I persevered. I adapted. I grew stronger.
But here’s the part I don’t talk about enough: I am more tired than I thought I’d be.
Not weak tired. Not “I can’t handle things” tired. More like earned exhaustion. The kind that comes from holding your ground, making hard decisions, and staying upright through storms you didn’t anticipate.
And yet, I’m also happier.
Happier because somewhere along the way, my tolerance for nonsense dropped dramatically.
Happier because I’ve developed a very healthy, very freeing “screw them” reflex paired with an even stronger “show myself grace” policy.
I buy myself gifts now. Not apology gifts. Not consolation prizes.
But you survived another chapter gifts.
My voice is stronger. It had to be.
Life didn’t leave much room for whispering.
I say what I mean more.
I don’t over-explain as much.
I trust myself faster. And I rest when I can without narrating my worth while doing so.
This life may not match the brochure I once imagined, but it’s honest. It’s hard-earned. It’s a little messy. And it’s mine.
Predictable and wildly unpredictable. Better and worse.
Exhausting and empowering.
And somehow, all of that can be true at the same time.
That’s okay. I’m okay.
And if this is what growth looks like; meaning I’m slightly tired, noticeably stronger, and significantly less interested in pleasing everyone, I’ll take it.
Categories: Culture, current events, identity, mental health, Psychology
psychologistmimi 
Absolutely!
LikeLike
It’s True ‘Life is Like a Box of Chocolates’
Ya Never Know What ‘Rogue
Amazon Package’ Ya Might
Receive Dear Miriam
Next
Yes Key
Whatever It is
Become a Feather
Become The Wind
Breeze Right By It
And Become the Flow
of the River Just Swamping
Obstacles
As Ya
Flush
’em
All
Away
SMiLes With
Season’s ‘Orange
Greetings’ Hope for
A New Year
he
he
‘no
more’..;)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Before I turned 40, I had plans: science PhD, NASA Astronaut program, etc. By shortly after 30, I had had my chance at NASA (finals in HOUSTON!) and found out my right eye wasn’t good enough, and that was that. Married at 25 to a fellow grad student in hard science, I had my first child at 36, the next one three years later. And I had my next dream job as a research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.
And then disaster struck: at a meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics of the American Physical Society, in Nov. of 1989 – Anaheim, CA – I caught a virus. And I have been battling a post-viral syndrome, ME/CFS, ever since. The first two kids were toddlers, and our last wasn’t even born – they’ve never known a well mother. The job – well, if you can’t stay awake in meetings and your brain won’t process, you’re on long-term disability forever.
When the kids were old enough, still sick (it’s progressive), I took on the challenge I had planned for ‘retirement’, writing novels, and have been producing mainstream literary fiction VERY SLOWLY since 2000, and have managed to publish the first two volumes in a mainstream trilogy – 2015 and 2022 – and am now hoping to finish the final one, Pride’s Children: LIMBO, if I have to hold a pen in my teeth.
The life I planned? “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”
This is what I have, and I can either suck it up on the really grotty days and make the best of it – or lose what I have left.
I love what I’m writing (there are few realistic novels that treat disabled main characters as fully human), and hope it will be a contribution and a legacy. Not up to me – but at least there’s SOMETHING.
Few of us, even the very determined, get what we want and we planned. Turns out that, of all diseases, my kind you cannot exercise-and-eat-right out of. Who knew there were things like this? (Now all the Long Covid folk are finding out.)
Problem is, when you get stuck in a hole without a shovel, you have to learn to live in a hole. And hope some future medical researcher will find a way to lower a rope ladder. Meanwhile, you plant edibles you can grow in the limited sunlight that makes it into the hole.
LikeLike