My best friend was murdered.
I'd like to think it was the worst year of my life. Everything lost its luster. I was so confused, hurt, angry...basically emotional devastation in all ways. On top of that, my boyfriend broke up with me because I was “too sad” over losing my best friend. The douchebaggery is real out here in these streets. More on that, in a bit.
I’m telling you this because this is a life event that shaped who I am today. If we’re going to be honest and real with each other, you need to know this tea.
I'd known Stephanie since elementary school. We were a part of each other's families. Her death changed the course of my life. I had an ok life. It was alright. Had a job, lived with my mom, traveled a bit. You know...ok. I had my friends, we dressed up, went out, did what all friends do. When she died at the age of 29, It took me awhile (survivor's guilt is REAL, more on that later) but I realized I needed to get my shit together. I needed to snap out of this trance of mediocrity and live the f*** out of this life because I don't know when it's going to end but it's definitely going to end, so I have got to get to it. It was definitely my "AHA" moment, I needed to start really living my life to its fullest potential.
I decided on Stephanie's 30th birthday, which is exactly one week before mine that I would mourn her for the last time. We had this huge fundraiser in her honor and we raised a great deal of money. I like to think that she was really proud of us for doing that in her name. At that fundraiser, while they played a video montage of Steph, I told myself, "this is it, here and now; this is the last of it. From now on, you don't mourn, you remember". Now I celebrate her life everyday by living mine. I took steps that I always planned on doing but with such little active effort that it was laughable. So, I moved out of my mom's house and I got my own place and it was EVERYTHING. I hated my job so I made it my mission to get a new one by the New Year. By mid-December I landed it! Once I applied myself, I really started getting everything I wanted. Once I stopped the complacency, I was changing everything I had always said I wanted to.
My boyfriend broke up with me because I didn't "want to get over Stephanie’s death. I WANTED to be sad". I wanted to "do nothing but be depressed", I had "no ambition and just wanted to live off of him". Yea, those were his words...verbatim. If you've lost anyone close to you, reading those words makes you feel crazy. We’ll get into my feelings on “living off someone” in a later post but as you get to know me, you’ll see how ridiculous that line will come to be.
Oh I caaariiied over this dude. I let myself cry. My friends rallied around me and said all the right things: “He ain’t shit!” “Let’s torch his place.” “He’s such a loser.” LOL (Love you guys!) I let myself mourn the relationship. Then I realized, wait...this dude is still alive. He gets to live and breathe and go on in the world. You don’t mourn that! He doesn’t want to be with you? That’s his choice and he has a right to it. You can learn from this and understand that he’s not for you. Um….yea even as I type that, I want to roll my eyes, but it’s true. I can’t help it if he ran when shit got real, or that he couldn’t understand why this affected me so much.
That’s on him. Let him have that.
This is getting long winded and we can get more into these things in the future but I just wanted to tell you a little bit about myself and what brought this site on. I've wanted to do this for a couple of years and it's time I bring it to fruition. It's still a work in progress and it's still growing but aren't we all? Everything I've been through has brought me to the place I am now.
Have you had your "AHA" Moment? I'd love to hear it.
xoSquared