Looking Back – Reminiscing on “the Good, the Bad and the Ugly Times”

While sitting at my desk listening to music I started reminiscing about how my life has changed over the past few years. My life isn’t perfect and I still have many goals that I have yet to reach but, I’m not where I use to be. Reminiscing on the good times also brought to mind the times in the not so distant past when things weren’t so great. I went from a few years of riding an incredible high to experiencing an almost unbearable low. At times life seemed to come at me fast and hard, while other times the blows were softer and milder.  For the longest my life resembled one of those movie scenes where you see the speeding train about to run full speed ahead into a car that’s now stalled out on the tracks, while the now trapped occupants stare helplessly out the window while bracing for the impending impact. That’s how hard life was coming at me. Everything from my finances to my health was tried and tested. During those super lean years, I would have to rely on gifts from family members and friends to brighten my children’s birthdays and holidays because I simply couldn’t afford to buy many gifts. Like any loving parent not being able to do for my children the way I wanted to cut me to the core.  With the passing of each year, things became more difficult than the year before, the phrase “tight budget” couldn’t come close to describing my situation. I was literally robbing Peter to pay Paul and then robbing Paul to pay everyone else.

Strange thing is, throughout it all my kids never complained. My youngest was born into the dysfunction, my oldest however, remembers the “Good times”. He’s seen the better days and the absolutely horrible ones. Times when our utilities were continuously being cut off because I couldn’t afford to pay them and buy food as well. Times where he couldn’t go to school because the car that was outside the night before, had now magically disappeared and all that was left was an empty parking space. He’s had to endure watching me go from being in perfect health one day, to almost dying twice and ending up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) while trying to bring his sister into the world. My children have seen me be knocked down by life repeatedly from every side, but I was never knocked out!

While going through those times I had moments where I thought, ” I might not make it through this and if I do I’m gonna be bruised and scarred”. Believe it or not, I’m thankful for having to experience those super lean years. Those times taught me that, sometimes in life things just happen. That at the end of the day, material things are truly just that…THINGS. And when we get that final call and we go to meet our maker, it doesn’t matter what we have and what we don’t have because either way, we can’t take it with us.

One of my biggest take aways from those trying times, was relearning how not to bring yesterday’s woes into today, because today will definitely come with its own set of problems. Throughout life difficult times will come and go, for me the times where all we had was each other to cling too, those precious moments that were birthed out of the most difficult of times, are the moments that will forever outshine the others. ~ Tashauna