Till it’s Gone

Ah, yes.  It’s that magical time of year between Christmas and NYE when I have no idea what day or time it is and spend the majority of my waking hours in pjs.  It’s basically a week of pre-approved and socially accepted childhood.  Growing up was such a bad move on my part. My microwave broke a few months ago.  I was devastated.  I wanted to heat up something I had cooked the day before and unbeknownst to me, the microwave that has been with me since my senior year of college had already taken it’s last spin.  Kaput.  Finito.  Bye boy bye.  And just like that, our time together was over.  All things must come to an end.  Everything has an expiration date.  Some of us have had to learn that the hard way.  Some of us still haven’t learned.  I promise you will.  Someday something or someone that you thought was yours will no longer be so.  It’ll hurt.  It might even be unbearable.  It’ll teach you one of life’s greatest lessons:  You don’t know what you have, till it’s gone.

If you’ve ever lost something, you know what I’m talking about.  Whether it’s a loved one, your keys or an earring.  If you’ve ever broken a bone or had a stuffy nose.  How does it feel when your wifi goes down or your AC breaks in the middle of a heatwave?  There are all sorts of things we take for granted in this life.  We have all of these things that create our bubble, but what if those things got taken away from you?  What’s important to you?  If your home lit on fire, what would you grab?  I always think about that.  I have my great grandmother’s wedding ring, an signed Ozzie Smith rookie baseball card and my computer.  And then I think, is that all my life is truly worth?  And maybe it is. What is in your life that you consider valuable?  Put your life into perspective.

I don’t know why this memory has always stuck with me, but it has.   I was visiting home while living in Chicago.  I’m not the girl that neatly folds everything and puts it in drawers and hangs things in the closet while travelling.  I don’t know how this became a part of who I am but my suitcase kinda explodes.  I am walking, talking chaos.  My stuff is ALL OVER THE PLACE.  So my dad was walking through my room and stepped on my headband and broke it.  I was thoroughly annoyed.  He apologized and said he would buy me a new one.  He felt so bad and I was all bent out of shape about a headband.  Well let me tell you something…I could give a flying #$&! about that headband.  It was a stupid HEADBAND.  Who even cares?!  If I could only have him back, he could step on all the headbands I own.  How trite we all have the tendency to become.  Our priorities get so out of whack.

When you get so used to something being a part of your life, you begin to forget its value.  Or maybe you know what you had.  You just never thought you could lose it.  When we become complacent, when we start taking things in our lives for granted, the magic of it all fades.  If you don’t believe you can lose something, you stop protecting it.  People who take their lives for granted feel like they have nothing to lose and when you enter that zone you become reckless, unattached and defiant.  The night my ex and I broke up, I remember looking at him and asking, “Do you want to be with me or not?”  It doesn’t matter what he said because he hesitated.  In that hesitation, I found my answer.  People go to war because they feel they have something worth fighting for…something they cannot live without.  No one puts up a shield because they don’t care.  People who know what they’ve got go through life a little more calculated, a bit more prideful and with a lot more purpose.   I want people in my life who will shield me from the darkness, who think I’m the stars and who understand that I am not a guarantee.  No hesitation…or I’m gone.