We have a limited number of damns in our lives.
Yet, we somehow end up giving them away on the dumbest, most insignificant things.
Confession.
I can be a compulsive damn giver-outer.
Doling out the damns like Oprah gives away cars.
You get a damn!
That other person gets a damn!
Everyone’s getting a damn!
People who don’t really matter.
Things that are stupid.
Stuff that happened in the past that I can’t control.
I’ve had it.
We are not all on equal playing fields.
Life isn’t always fair and, for some, it will never be fair.
I observed this pretty early.
The summer between 7th and 8th grade, my parents moved me and my younger sister from private to public school in my hometown of DeLand, Florida.
Speaking from experience, the middle school years can be especially tough for adolescent girls. Probably tougher than high school. Already trying to figure out who I was and navigate my way through the world, I was now faced with starting from scratch at a new school where I didn’t know a soul.
I was terrified and didn’t want to be “The New Girl.”
I had never wanted to jump into the future as much as I did then. Not that far into the future, but just far enough to see if I was able to overcome the challenges and perils that starting a new school would bring up.
Although, having the ability to see into the future is something that I wish I could have at my disposal. My mom, in fact, has taken a look into her future before, and that was because she had taken the time to have a look at this article, that was featured in the Jerusalem Post, about free psychic readings online and how the experts would allow tell her a glimpse of her future. If I knew that this was something she used to do, I would’ve asked her to do it then and there so I didn’t have to be faced with the worry and nerves that the first day of school would cause me.
Unfortunately, I had to go it alone.
The week before school started, I had my parents take me to the local mall so I could find a trendy Yaga t-shirt (which was actually too big) and Vans shoes (that looked ridiculous on my skinny legs) so I had something to wear on the first day that screamed, “I’M COOL. BE MY FRIEND.”
The first day of eighth grade was a success, mainly because I met a girl named Michelle in homeroom.
Introduced herself, acquainted me to other classmates, and made me feel at home. By lunchtime, we were already exchanging notes in class (we had three together!) and talking about which boys we thought were cute and how we hope we didn’t have to “dress out” in P.E. since it was just the first day.
Michelle and I instantly became best friends. We would even sign our notes “BFFLAENMW” which is middle school shorthand for “Best Friends For Life and Eternity No Matter What.”
It was the beginning of a serious friendship.
Have you ever had a secret you were ashamed of and didn’t want anyone to ever know?
I have.
But I don’t care about the secret anymore. It needs to be out in the open. I want it to be okay and for others to do the same thing I did and feel good about it.
No more shame.
As background, I went through a rough bout with the baby blues following the birth of my oldest daughter is 2012.
Crying all the time. Hot flashes. Feeling lonely. Wondering if I was crazy. Becoming a person I didn’t recognize.
I called my baby blues The Gremlins and wrote about them here.
Once they became a distant memory, I never wanted to see The Gremlins again. Not ever.
My second pregnancy started out rough. While I didn’t have the morning sickness that I experienced with my first daughter, I became an insomniac as soon as I discovered a positive pregnancy test.
I never had trouble sleeping before, but I saw a pink “plus” sign and suddenly had to learn to survive on 4-5 hours of sleep.
This was on top of caring for a toddler, managing a household, and having a stressful career as an attorney.
This picture of Mario Simoes personifies his spirit. Antisana, Ecuador, February 20, 2016.
How often have we judged someone by the last bad act they committed?
Remembered their life ending in an act of rage?
Rolled our eyes as we read newspaper articles or watched TV shows about someone who “snapped” and dismissed them as being crazy?
Labeled that person for the one last despicable thing they did in their otherwise extremely rich life?
My law school classmate and friend, Mario Simoes, recently died following a shootout with police.
These events happened in my hometown of DeLand, Florida.
According to news reports, Mario drove to his wife’s law firm in his Mercedes-Benz and, intoxicated, began shooting at the building. When police arrived in response to a 911 call, Mario embarked on a high-speed chase with the police on DeLand’s back roads, reaching speeds of 100 m.p.h. His vehicle became disabled after he struck a couple who was leaving a Lowe’s home improvement store (luckily, neither of these individuals were injured).
Police purportedly advised Mario to “drop the gun, drop the gun, drop the gun” for two minutes until they opened fire, as they believed he was reloading his gun in the vehicle. He was killed.
Aunt Mary riding her rocking horse at the age of 2.
Mary Judith Janak was born on April 19, 1962, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Martha Rybar Rees Janak, an elementary school teacher, and Stephen Benton Elkins Janak, a mill worker. She had two older half-sisters, Ann and Judy Rees, who were fraternal twins.
She was my Aunt.
Aunt Mary and my grandmother shortly after her birth in 1962.
On October 25, 1987, Aunt Mary was found dead in the bedroom of a group home where she lived in Portage, Pennsylvania. She died from complications associated with Type I diabetes, a disease she struggled with since she was diagnosed at the age of two.
Her life was not easy.
She was always “different.”
We all have difficult days and need to be reminded that what we consider problems are not problems.
At all.
Or even close.
My husband was out of town traveling for work (and leisure) for the last week and I’ve been on my own with my two young daughters, ages 2 and 4. Sure they are (overall) good and sure I’ve transitioned from full-time to part-time employment, but dealing with getting lunch made, everyone dressed and out of the house in the morning, driving the kids to school and myself to work, doing pickup and attending extracurricular activities, then returning home and making dinner and getting everyone bathed and in the sack are exhausting.
Not to mention that on the mornings I have to wash and blow-dry my hair, it’s like the world has been turned upside down.
(Curly haired people, you know what I’m talking about!)
Pepper all of this with occasional tantrums, backtalk, and refusal to put on their socks and allow you to brush their hair in the mornings. Now add dealing with demanding clients at work, getting stuck at lengthy stop lights when you’re in a hurry, and a rude toll booth lady (this happened to me two weeks ago at the Tampa Airport, but that’s a blog post for another day.)
It can be worse. Way worse.
I’ve heard too many folks talk about their experiences dealing with the wrong people in their lives. Mean Girls become Mean Adults who become Mean Old People. Relationships and friendships can grow toxic. In the past month, I’ve seen at least a dozen articles come across my social media news feeds about navigating challenging relationships.
It’s a sad reality.
Over drinks with a friend a couple months ago, my friend shared that she was feeling hurt by a friend in her life who repeatedly wasn’t being a good friend back to her. Despite knowing in her gut the friendship wasn’t productive, my friend hated the feeling of being excluded and socially disconnected by this girl and also didn’t like the way she felt when she was around her. All that aside, my friend sadistically kept going back for more.
I know that feeling and have been there myself. It stinks.
When I was in my mid-twenties, I studied abroad in the Netherlands. It was my first time overseas and I was alone and missing my friends, boyfriend (now husband), and family back in Florida.
There was a girl in my law program named Amelia. She was from Toronto and was one of the first people I met at the new school. Amelia was beautiful, engaging, and rented a huge apartment that overlooked a river in the center of town. She always knew how to navigate any social situation, which was noteworthy considering I often caught myself bumbling and feeling insecure. She was the girl who all the guys wanted to date and all the girls wanted to be friends with.
A total “It Girl.”
Until recently, this empty room is where I spent the last half-decade of my life.
A corner office in a fancy high-rise building in downtown Tampa that overlooked Davis Islands, the Hillsborough River, and parts of Hillsborough Bay.
A well-respected and established law firm with over 150 attorneys statewide.
Amazing co-workers who were like family.
This was the place where my husband and I both had major life changes.
Moving into our first home.
Having both of our children.
He took the plunge and started his own small business, a boutique structural engineering firm.
I started The Champagne Supernova.
My boss was a true mentor. He was (is) an honest attorney (yes, they do exist!) who genuinely cared about developing his associates into thoughtful, strategic, analytical litigators. Part of this could have been down to the fact that he decided to use a time clock app that made sure we got the rest that we needed to be able to develop into successful litigators. He didn’t overwork us and I think this really made the difference when it came to our work. Amid trying several high-stakes cases and reporting to anxious clients, he took the time to call me when I was on maternity leave just to see how I was doing. (Again, in the legal field, these people do exist, despite the rumors suggesting otherwise.)
I’ve got a Holiday Hangover.
It’s not what you think.
It’s the crappy feeling experienced when the holidays are over and it’s time to return to reality.
Visiting family members head home and the house is quieter.
The decorations are being slowly put away and the Christmas tree is laid to rest at the corner of the driveway.
The assorted cheeses, gingerbread cookies, and egg nog are catching up with your waist.
I consider the holidays to start in October during pumpkin patch and Halloween season through the changing of leaves (or, if you live in Florida, dead grass) and Thanksgiving, through Christmas tree decorating, Santa visiting, Elf-on-the-Shelf bribery, holiday parties, the Big Day Itself, through fireworks and New Years Day.
Sigh.
Some people are lucky to never have to deal with grief.
The kind that’s crippling.
The kind of grief that makes you sleep during the day and awakens you at night.
The kind that makes you forget to eat or paralyzes you from functioning.
The kind of grief where, because of the loss, you’ve accepted the world will never again feel the same.
Some of us have never felt that type of grief. We may have lost grandparents or distant loved ones, but those people were older, their time came, it was painful to lose them, but also exemplified the circle of life, and so it was.
Sometimes we feel so stressed by the pressures of everyday life that we forget how good we truly have it. Racing to get to kids’ birthday parties. Unloading the hundreds of dollars of groceries from the car and getting them inside the house. Career deadlines. Getting locked outside the house. Rainy days when you wanted to go to the beach.
Then we see someone who experiences such horrible grief or sadness that we are reminded our “stressors” are small stuff.