2010. I wonder what I thought life would be like in 2010 back when I started this blog. I wonder who I thought I would be. I can say with confidence that my expectations from life were completely skewed. I'm not sure I even comprehended the concept of a lifetime - every day was a great adventure rather than a compilation of time devoted to an end result.
Hardship has come to head for many of my friends and family, and for most of America in this time. We have been forced to cut back on extravagant lifestyles and reassess what things we really value.
I do not believe in making excuses, and I know that every decision, big or small, that I make represents my character to others. People who have been made to suffer the consequences of past decisions can be brought to a level of desperation that reveals their vulnerability and the motive behind what they are doing. This is true with over using credit, over eating, and over indulgence in drugs and alcohol. Over spending raises a red flag to creditors and there is a constriction on available credit - which in turn restricts spending and the problem forces itself to be dealt with. Over eating leads to obesity, which leads to health problems that threaten death if they are not dealt with. Usage of drugs and alcohol quickly turns into addiction, which escalates and can quickly send a person desperately on the hunt for money to obtain the next fix, even if it means personally violating family members and friends. Most people battle one or more of these three issues within their lifetime.
I take complete responsibility for the mistakes I made that brought me to my desperate fight against one of those evils. That defeat brought me back to basics and made me seriously re-evaluate my position on this earth and as an individual. I had to pinpoint the things that I would not sacrifice in the process of becoming me...the things that defined me as I was then and were unquestionably a part of who I wanted to become.
The most desperate moment of my life was the moment I my family in on everything; when I asked for help. Have you ever felt that a mistake you made, in the moment it was revealed, somehow bared your entire soul rather than a bad decision? Well, there is a difference between taking responsibility for a mistake and asking for help dealing with it, and bringing a problem to the feet of others with expectations of help but no plans for change. I was lucky to find that my family believed in my intent to change - and that gave me faith in my ability to make the changes I had in-confidently set my sights on making. The problem, when evaluated by a group of people who truly wanted to help and were not submerged in it, suddenly seemed easy to defeat.
Over the past two years I have gone from what I thought was the lowest and most unstable point in my entire life, to the true rock bottom, and started working my way back up. I haven't found my way to the happiness, almost weightlessness, that I felt when I was in high school, when life was a fantasy waiting to come true.
It's not that I feel I have experienced the worst that life is going to throw at me, but I have simplified life to a point that allows me to look at the big picture and see what I want the outcome to be, instead of what I want to do tonight or have right now. I found that this moment can be both a work in progress and a fantasy coming true at the same time. I know that if I am taken away at any point on this path, I will have lived my purpose.
20-10, like it's never been.
