(When you’ve had the day I have, you eat ice cream in bed. Thank you Ben & Jerry for always being there when I need you. Y’all the real MVPs.)
This is a pretty difficult article for me to write. Please bear with me as I get (possibly a little too) personal and slightly stray away from my usual positive-attitude/inspirational focus. (I promise I’ll return to that by the end).
I have a little notebook of ideas I jot down or brainstorm before I write one of my blog posts. The other day I was venting to a friend about how certain bosses in jobs have given other employees special treatment and how I always seem to end up with the short end of the stick. I, of course, don’t think I do anything to deserve it, but sometimes things just play out that way, which is just how life goes sometimes.
So that night I jotted down a new article topic, “When it feels Like the ENTIRE World is Against You”. I was going to explain that yes, sometimes life just sucks, bad days happen, people don’t include you, it hurts, and yadda yadda yadda.
(I should also mention that I find timing to be a really funny thing with these articles. You may not realize, but I typically write these in one afternoon and basically forget about them until the next week, when they’re posted. A lot of times I’ve forgotten my weekly topic or what I even wrote about.)
Going back to my theme of the world being against you, I was outlining what I wanted to say in that article and wrapped it up, put my notebook aside and continued on with my night…
And then the guy I had been seeing came over and dumped me.
Shaking my head and laughing about it now, (after I spent that night crying, I am human after all!) I can’t help but think how life always has an interesting way of working itself out, and it’s never in the way you expect. In my outline, I had planned to talk about allowing yourself to have a pity-party when you hit a rough patch. I was going to encourage you to listen to a sad song, watch a favorite chick-flick, read a sad book and to allow the floodgates to open until you just can’t cry any more.
I planned to quote my favorite television character, Lorelai Gilmore, in her motherly advice: “What I think you really need to do today is wallow…get back in your pajamas, go to bed, eat nothing but gallons of ice cream and tons of pizza, don’t take a shower or shave your legs or put on any kind of makeup at all and just sit in the dark and watch a really sad movie and have a good long cry and just wallow. You need to wallow.”
Little did I know, I would take my own advice the very next day. (I should have seen it coming; Lorelai was comforting her daughter after a breakup!) I think God lined it up just like that on purpose. He knew I’d see the humor in the situation, eventually, and it would help to soften the blow. As they say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”. I had a good long cry, talked to my girlfriends, rehashed the situation and the entire relationship, drank a (few) Irish coffee(s), and I wallowed. I wallowed real good. Then I picked myself back up, dusted myself off (put on a little mascara) and kept on truckin’.
After I finished my heaping slice of humble pie (and a couple of margaritas), I realized that I had to change the way I was going to write this article. I had to strip down my sarcasm and my emotional anonymity, and bare my situation to you all. I wanted to honestly show that I write from my personal life experiences. I love sharing my hurts, failures, struggles, etc. just in case it may someday help someone else going through a similar situation.
When I first meet someone, I warn them that I wear my heart on my sleeve to a fault. I will say “I love you” too quickly, too often, to too many people- but I won’t apologize for it. Life is too short, and it has its constant ups and downs and the more we share those times with each other, the easier the hard moments are to bear.
I refuse to censor myself to paint a more flattering picture. Allow the world to see the raw you; without your makeup, Instagram filters, witty captions and big smile. Life is messy, scary, heartbreaking, breathtaking, unbelievable, gorgeous, fun, wonderful, and so much else. Don’t let one awful day, one hard breakup, one mean boss, or one crappy person ruin that.
Focus on the good until you just can’t anymore. Let yourself rest, heal, learn, and grow, but then lift your head a little bit higher than before and make your reflex be to see the silver lining in every situation. Life is just better that way. I can tell you from experience.
Xo
Lauren