December 3, 2019
A house of silence. We barely speak and the days feel like years. I’m not sure what to do so I will do nothing. Just go to work and take care of myself and my kids. My kids that he attacked and called lazy. Fuck him. I didn’t text him once yesterday and he left me alone. The important thing is not to break and start the argument that he so badly wants. Whatever I do or say is going to set him off in some way. So what you don’t like the holidays? Just don’t like them and you don’t have to participate. You don’t have to be cruel and ruin everyone else’s holiday. But if I say that, it will be wrong too. Resolved myself to there’s nothing I can do but live my life. Live it and be happy or unhappy.
Happiness is a choice and it is one that is always available. In 2021, when I packed up the little rental house I loved and lived in for six years (we don’t need a lease anymore), I found a memory box. A box I had carefully dragged with me from home to home over the course of my adult life.
This very special box contained every card I ever received for my birthdays (forty-five-wow), weddings (two, oops didn’t mean for that), births (three, oops didn’t mean for that either) and graduations (two and counting).
Inside this cherished box were notes from my children telling me I was the best mom ever! Cards from patients that promised they would never forget me or how I had helped them through the worst moments of their lives. Multiple cards from multiple men that said, you are the love of my life. It even contained a tiny piece of scrap paper from the hospital, where years before a man simply wrote, thanks for the cookies. Oh did I cling to those words and memories.
I searched through the box for the card I know is there. The last card my grandmother Alice ever handed me, written on my thirteenth birthday, New Year’s Eve 1998. She wouldn’t live to see me turn fourteen. She wrote, “So now you’ve reached to be a teenager. I hope you will be very happy. Be smart”.
A series of life events had left me broke in more ways than one and I was about to be homeless. A moment in time where I felt anything but happy and smart. You’re miserable K, you’re so stupid.
A moment in time that felt anything but, the golden opportunity that it turned out to be. The pandemic was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I turned my grandmother’s wish into a talisman. A jeweler morphed her formal cursive words, be very happy, into a gold necklace that I wore every single day. A reminder from one of my angels to be smart and be very happy as I set out to create my new life.
One morning, on my way to work I listened to a podcast about happiness. That morning I felt anything but happy, as I sat practically parked on Route 287 in northern New Jersey. I took a job as a travel nurse and the commute was pure misery, some mornings it took me nearly two hours to get to work. That’s two hours before working twelve hours, then driving over an hour home. Fifteen hours a day away from home, far from my kids that I’d never been more than ten minutes away from. I’m doing this for us. I cannot miss the opportunity.
How dare I be miserable? I made triple what I made as a staff nurse, triple what my coworkers made, for doing the same exact job might I add. It was hard and I was exhausted, but it was worth it. I’m not as tired as I was working sixty hours a week.
It was worth it to pay the college tuition and have extra money in the bank, something I hadn’t had in years. I do not get to be miserable about this commute.
It was worth it not to bat an eyelash when I heard how much new cleats would cost for my son’s ever growing feet. Best surprise of my life that one.
It was worth it to finally say yes to anything and everything, after saying no for so many years. Sure, let’s go.
It was worth it when two agonizing years later, I was handed the keys to my house. We did it kids.
Any day you get to wake up and can choose to be happy. It sounds like complete hyperbole until I realize that it’s completely correct. No one forced me to do any of it. I didn’t have to be a travel nurse, just like I didn’t have to stay at my previous job.
I can go back to working sixty hours a week any time I choose, work two jobs and remain barely able to pay my bills or save a dime. I can even sleep on the goddamn floor forever if I want. This is a choice.
It is a choice. Choose to smile or choose to take your rage out on innocent clerks and slow driver’s everywhere. Choose to be miserable (I have every right) or choose to be grateful (what an opportunity to learn from).
The best part of the human experience is our ability to feel and I am in no way saying not, to feel your feelings. It is a privilege to feel them deeply. Trust me.
Like all of us, I experience pain, grief and disappointment; sadness, fear, rage and self-pity from time to time. Your grief simply means you have loved deeply, and your rage only speaks to the fact that you are still alive. And kicking.
I also experience happiness. I feel joy, bliss, gratitude, excitement, love, pride and confidence.
I may have to dig a little deeper to find these feelings, but every day I get to make a choice and my choice is to be very happy.
February 18, 2023
It’s 3:30 in the morning and I am feeling pretty overwhelmed. 11 fucking years it took me. A divorce, a short sale, credit destroyed, bankrupt. Work, work and more work. 2 jobs, then 3. Mistakes, Trip, Fall, Stand. I get back up every time. Stumble again. Own your mistakes. LEARN. Another divorce. Abandoned. Shocked. Rock bottom. Slept on the floor. Slept on the couch. Lived in the call room. Work 60 hours a week. Learn some more. Make some more mistakes. Hustle. Never quit. Cry. Rage. Scream in the car when no one could hear me. Get up and do it again. Show up for myself. Fail. Fuck up. Shame. Withdraw from the world. RISE AGAIN. Fight. Claw my way out. Rage some more. Find peace.