unconditional love for life, even when it smells like farts

You know what sucks sometimes? Life. You know why? Because we let it.

Okay, peace out. That's all I had to share.

Jaykay, dudes. I wouldn't leave you hanging after not updating in an embarrassingly long time. (Sorrrryyyy).

I've written about this before, because I've dealt with this before. I determined life can be a jerk and that we have a choice in how we react. I then figured, just by way of knowing this, that I'd magically be super great at reacting; like some sort of peace warrior. Or a happy ninja. Like the Pink Power Ranger.

Nope.

Turns out, life is going to be good and bad and hard and fun and easy and lame. Forever. Life is like a relationship. I'm not married and I don't have a boyfriend, but from what I've seen and experienced, there is no magic tipping point in any couple's timeline in which everything becomes perfect. If unconditional love is the foundation of a relationship, as it should be, the yucky moments will be fused together by a really rad, glorious level of understanding. These two people will disagree with each other, one will experience pain while the other won't, one might unintentionally say the wrong thing or make a really dumb choice, and so on and so forth. But again, if this relationship is built on unconditional love, these speed bumps will be met with an understanding that it will change and that everything will be okay.

What if we had unconditional love for the events of our own lives? All of them. Especially the yucky ones.

All of the following things happened within about two weeks: 

• One of my good friends passed away. I spent several days in the hospital before he died. 
• Another friend was hospitalized and had surgery before I could visit her.
• The day after she was released, my best friend was hospitalized for another condition. 
• Another friend moved away suddenly and for a good cause, but watching him leave was hard.
• A family member fell ill and may need surgery.

Throughout all of this, my body has taken a beating. I feel like a puffy marshmallow who can only eat more puffy marshmallows. I don't even like marshmallows. My spine is pretty upset with me and my chiropractor called me a jigsaw puzzle. There's more, but for the sake of time, I'll leave it at that.

If I'm taking my own advice here, I should be able to have unconditional love for all that really crappy stuff I just listed. But, last time I checked, I'm human. So there's pretty much no way that I could have rocked through all of that with butterflies flying out of my butt and cartoon hearts shooting out of my ears. Looking back (assuming Bad News Train has left Toots Station), I do feel like I could have handled things better. I got real low for a solid week. And not the cool "get low, girl, get low" kinda low. I was crying a lot, guys. I mean, I was a sloppy mess. 

But, if I'm honest with myself, I wasn't a weepy pile of unproductive poo because of the events themselves. I was a hot mess because I thought I could handle all of it. I thought I could visit the hospital daily and I could still be that strong, hilarious, quirky lady who all my friends saw me as. Turns out, I can't. And that's okay. Furthermore, for the rest of my life, I will probably struggle with listening to the voice that says, "This is where we get off, T. You've had enough and you need to sit back and listen to your heart now." 

I have a pretty sweet opportunity. Instead of judging how I dealt with all of that and making a set of rules for next time, I can compassionately and loving look at the experience and love myself for how I handled it. I did what I could with the energy, resources and time I had. Yeah, sure, I would have done things differently. Oh, well. Better luck next time. And next time a big chunk of life goes south, I might not be able to handle that well, either. But that's okay. 

I'm accepting that crappy things are going to happen to me and that, yes, I can choose how I react. But, when you're in it, like really in it, you may not feel like you have much control. All I'm asking of myself and of anyone else is: find space to love yourself in those moments. It would look something like this:

You're sitting on the edge of your bed with your head in your hands and you're crying snotty tears all over the place. You don't even know why you're crying this hard, but you just found out that some terrible shit is happening to you/to people close to you. You feel like there's nothing you can do. It's in this precise moment that I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself, "I love you." Love yourself for being able to feel this much, for caring this much and for wanting things to be okay. Take a really big breath and go eat some chocolate. This won't fix the problem you're facing, but it will soften the blow with love.

You know what? Life is probably going to get a lot harder than the last two weeks. I mean, there's a possibility for it, at least. That stuff was totally crummy, but I can list a lot of much nastier things that could happen right now. I'm not saying this to lessen the severity or belittle my problems or the problems of others. I'm mentioning this to remind myself (and you) that no matter how intense the issue, we'll have to face it. We just will. Because that's life. 

By having an unconditional amount of love for simply living, I know that I'll get through whatever it is and things will be okay. No judgement, no regrets. Just love.

GROUP HUG!