I Believe In Fate.

I believe in fate.
Believe that everything happens for a reason. It’s the reason that has come to intrigue me of late.

See, I guess you could say I was on a pretty unlucky streak for a few years. The list of unfortunate things that took place in my life over the past 4 years, is one that if I actually put it in print would surly make me want to immediately jump off a bridge. Mind you, I live in a place nick-named Bridge-town, so there is no shortage! But rest assured I am tougher than that. Things most people encounter at a distance, throughout the course of a lifetime, or not at all; nearly squashed me like a bug in the course of 3 years.
So after a while you start to add it all up and think to yourself, one or all of the following…

A). I’m just a terribly unlucky soul.
B) I can’t catch a break
C) My life sucks!
D) Why me?

In this mode, I lived for those dark, grey years. Where every day, I would wake up to some new catastrophe.

Then the bottom fell out.

The fantastic thing about the bottom falling out (or finally hitting rock bottom), is that at least your there! What else can possibly go wrong? A question I have learned never to ask, by the way! At some point it just has to turn around right?

For those first six months after he left, I just tried to keep my head above water. Not let the darkness swallow me whole. It felt like the bottom. Let me assure you.

It had gotten almost comical.

You know the point when it’s not just raining? It’s not just pouring? It’s an actual monsoon! The kind of rain Noah built an arc for. That was my life.

I remember one day going to kickboxing class, not long after he left. I’d had a rough morning. It was pouring rain,one of those mornings when you can’t tell if it’s 7am or 7pm. It soaked me to the core as I ran across the parking lot, a crying baby on each hip. Throughout the whole class I kept smelling this awful odor. Finally when class was over I went to undress and shower. When I took my brand-new tennis shoes off, my white sock was bright yellow. The cat had latterly pissed in my new shoe! I called my girlfriend, half-laughing, half-crying. She said “does anything good, EVER happen to you?”

It hadn’t in a very long time.

But somehow when the clouds roll back, you find yourself living in the moment. You turn the “poor me” into “damn it! I can do this!” and “I have so much to be thankful for”. Then slowly, you begin to believe it. In believing you find power and strength.

When you’re in the middle of getting the shit-kicked out of you, it’s difficult to remember that there is a greater plan. That everything happens for a reason. That even this crisis you are going through is teaching you something, is protecting you from something else. How much easier would those hard times be if we knew without question, that what is meant to be, will be?

If we are aware, when the storm passes we can reflect on it with an open mind. We can draw the lesson. We can piece together the puzzle.

In my case, I can look back and say with everything in me, that those devastatingly awful things I endured, those are the things that make me the women I am now.

Because of that:

I know who I am.
I am happy.
I am driven to find the meaning and purpose of my life.
I’m rebuilding my life from the ground up.
I am finally in control.
And I am eternally grateful.

There are still things that I go through that are difficult. There is a piece of me that is fragile. And when you want something so bad but it doesn’t go your way, it’s so hard to understand why. When you have done the research, you have decided it’s the best thing for you, how could it not be? But sometimes it just doesn’t turn out the way you dream it. It’s hard to fall back on faith and know, this is what is meant to be. This is what’s right for me. No matter how much it hurts.

That’s the point when all you have to go on is faith. What you have to look forward to is finding the answer, or at least growing from the experience. Taking the lesson and moving on.

I believe in fate.
I believe in destiny.
I believe in me.
I believe in the human spirit and its inability to give up.
I believe that my life has only just begun.