Surviving Life

What does it even mean to survive life? I’m sure that’s what a lot of people will ask themselves when they come across my blog. I guess in all honesty that’s what I am trying to figure out; that’s why I decided to write this.

When I was a kid surviving was a word in my vocabulary that meant nothing more to me than an adult description of hope. I think on some level maybe I understood that…but let’s be real, what child REALLY understands hope; aside from maybe “I hope I get a Nintendo for Christmas.”

As a teenager I guess I developed a new meaning of the word survive. Survive the week so I could hang out with my friends over the weekend. Survive this final so I could be done with this class and somehow pass…even if it meant barely scraping by….Survive the embarrassment of falling down, being dumped….being a teen. Survive high school; that at times seemed impossible!

Then we grow up and survive becomes something more. Survive the holidays without breaking the bank, survive the month without running out of food, having a breakdown…forgetting to eat…You got this (this…THING…) and eventually everything will be better…right?

Somewhere along the path of life I learned what survive really meant. I learned the hard way, the shitty way…the “I hate how unfair life can fucking be” way…sorry if cussing is offensive to anyone reading this, but lets be real for just a moment, just a brief damn second of this thing we call “living”. Life is fucking unfair. Does that mean I am bitter or unappreciative or jaded? NO! Actually I love my life! I love the messy chaotic, sometimes unbearable moments that have created this amazing existence I try every day to survive. But…Life…DAMN; it really is unfair.

I lost my mother about a year before I started writing this and sometimes it feels like the entire world shifted and somehow…I’m the only one who felt it. It feels like screaming on top of a mountain and no one can hear me. Have you ever had one of those dreams where you are trying to scream out for help, but the sound won’t escape your throat so you just keep silently whaling with no satisfaction? Yeah! that’s how it feels….EVERY…DAMN…DAY!!

When I was a child I watched a movie. What the movie was isn’t actually important, but there was a line in the move that shook me in ways I didn’t understand at the time; even so, it crept into my child brain and made me question existence, life, death…it made me question everything. It created a lifelong fear that caused me to think “I can’t wait till I’m old enough to accept that one day I’m going to die”. Not because I wanted to die, I just didn’t want to be afraid of it anymore.

That fear has shaped a huge part of who I am. It’s shaped my obsessions, my tolerances, my adventure (or lack of in some cases), it’s shaped ME; and I don’t say that in a bad way. Its created an appreciation for everything…for the trees, the mountains, the water. It’s created a child like “awe” of everything beautiful because I want to take a mental snapshot of it and remember it for as long as I can…I want to remember… EVERYTHING!

And then something happened…I lost my mom, my person, my best friend, my last call of the day. I lost my tie to this thing called life and suddenly “surviving” once again means something new to me…and right now…I don’t know what that is…

Perhaps through asking the right questions I can find my answer…because right now I just want to rewind and forget about surviving…and instead live every moment with her the same way I try to snapshot the trees. I want to live…I want to survive…I want HER to survive…and I want to know how I’m supposed to survive loosing her…and I don’t know how!

And then as I sit wondering how to move forward I ask myself once again. What does survive really mean? How do you survive a loss that you don’t want to move on from? So here I am putting pen to paper…or fingers to keys as the case may be…hoping to find the answer with all of you who care to listen, who are asking the same questions as me…What does survive really mean?