When you fall you instinctively reach for something to hold on to. If you fall hard enough and long enough you'll grasp anything you can get your hands on. If you're lucky, even if you grab something not strong enough to support you for long, it will give you time to get your footing.
When I started blogging I posed the question "Why do we blog? Why do I blog?"
Jen, the first person to comment on my blog, astutely answered, "For me, sometimes making the blog just gives the world a chance to reach out and touch me, and some times I need that to keep going... "
At the time I thought I understood what she meant but I didn't really understand. Now I do. I started blogging because I felt cut off from my family, friends and the world. I was confused, angry, bitter and upset with everyone and everything but mostly with myself.
Five years ago today, I was in an car accident, or rather five years ago today I caused a car accident. As I watched a man, who was in the car I struck, take his last breath on the side of a busy highway I knew my life would never be the same. Being responsible for taking a life, even if by accident, is something I will live with everyday of my life. I have come to terms with it as much as a person can, or at least as much as I can. While it will forever be part of me, it no longer defines me as I once let it. It has found it's place in my life but that is not what this post is about.
To my surprise, guilt and remorse weren't the only words I realized I never knew the meaning of until that day. I waited for help. I didn't ask for it because I didn't feel I had the right. But I knew, like I knew the sun would rise, that my family and friends would rush to help me get through it. They didn't. Worse, they went about their lives like nothing had happened, like I was some sort of monster that could be unaffected by such an event.
The longer I waited for help that never came the angrier and more bitter I became. Couldn't they see I was struggling? Couldn't they see I was sinking? Didn't they care? I realized then that the foundation I had built my life on was crumbling under my feet. When you start believing your life is nothing but smoke and mirrors you start to question everything. What's real? What's not? Reality becomes blurred. When you mix guilt and regret with sorrow, anger and bitterness the result is toxic and even if you sip it slowly... especially if you sip it slowly, it can kill you.
If I would have tried to write this post when I first started blogging I would have listed all the ways my family and friends had wronged me and let me down. I would have inserted all the facts that supported my argument. I would have pointed out that my eyes have been open to the truth about people and then felt guilty and angry because I brought that truth upon myself. I don't need to do that anymore. I never should have wanted to.
When you feel betrayed and stop trusting everyone you find yourself in a deep dark hole that doesn't seem worth the effort to climb out of at times. Over the last five years, in that hole, I have seen a thousand faces and all of them are mine. As I searched for the reason why the people I loved didn't respond the way I expected, for why they didn't love me, I realized a truth about them and all people. They were as scared, unsure, sad and lost as I was. They had never dealt that type of situation. They were scared they would handle it wrong so they pretended it didn't happen. Nothing as sinister as I had imagined in my head.
I realize now the people in my life have dreams I don't know about and fears they dare not tell. They have expectations and let downs. I have failed them many times and never known it. I understand a little better that every single person I encounter has as much going on inside their head as I do.
The most important thing I've realized is that people are flawed. My family is flawed, my friends are flawed, strangers are flawed but most of all I am flawed. What has became obvious is that I'm the most flawed person I know. Not because of the accident but because I know all my own thoughts, feelings and actions. I know most of my thousand faces and I don't like them all. As Daughter once so wisely pointed out, 'every problem I've ever had in my whole life has one thing in common... me'.
I've learned if we want to blame, hate, or be angry at people then the closest ones to us become the easiest targets. BUT, these are the same people who know all of our faults and love us despite them, in some cases because of them. These are the people who are willing to love us for who we are not what we want to project to the world. These people, with all their flaws, are the ones who have earned our love, respect and trust. I'm making the effort to keep that in mind these days.
With my new found knowledge, though I know there is much more to learn, I have forgiven the people in my life (not that they did anything wrong) for not living up to my unrealistic expectations to be perfect. Mostly I've forgiven myself for not being perfect. I have found a true foundation to place my trust, instead of leaving it anywhere it happens to fall. It's been a long journey for me and I'm tired, very tired but hopeful and thankful for the blessings I have been given and the gift of life that lays in front of me. As Time Traveller once told me, "if you believe in God then you must believe he let you live for a reason." I do.
So five years later the world looks a lot different than it did before. And even though a day won't go by that I won't wish I didn't know what I know now, at least this new knowledge will help me move forward, which is more than I thought was ever possible not to long ago.
