It's been a long time since I've written a multi-parter that wasn't fiction but I see this blog being at least two blogs long. Maybe three...
So background time! My friend Juice asked me to write this blog a few months ago. It's about a life philosophy that she and I both practice. Choosing to be happy. Sounds simple right? You just decide that you are going to be happy and do that. And it really is just that simple. In theory. In practice at times it can get tricky because you forget. Which makes no sense at all, how can you forget to choose to be happy? Does that mean you are choosing to be unhappy? Sometimes yes you are. And you will continue to be unhappy until you realize that you are choosing that path and change it.
Okay deeper background time. I have two ways I can tell my early life story. I can say I was raised in a pretty normal family. There were a few rough years as a family member struggled with some issues that affected all of us. We didn't have a lot of money but we never went hungry or homeless so we were in pretty good shape. My parents loved each other and loved all of us and did the best they could in life. I married young to my high school sweetheart and we moved away to start our own family. Or I can say, I had a shitty childhood. My sister abused drugs and while she did that she abused me as well. My parents didn't do anything to stop it and so I learned not to trust anyone at any time for any thing. I spent my teenage years pissed at the world and only through some dumb luck ended up with my husband who for some reason wanted to marry me. We left town as soon as we could and never looked back.
Both are true in their own ways. And I've used both at different times to describe the way things were. Now I tend to do a blend. I don't sugar coat the years that my sister was struggling or what it meant for me. I've told that story on here before so I won't bore you those details. It's part of what made me who I am. It completely colored my high school years. But I also don't dwell on it and I sure as hell don't use it as an excuse for anything. The same thing with my parents. They made some mistakes raising me but they also did a lot of things right. As a parent now I see that I did the same thing with C. I made some mistakes that I would love to be able to correct but I did a lot of things right as well. So I can't really judge them harshly. But all of those things were my past. They are what brought me to this point. Without them I wouldn't have the compassion or understanding that I do for other people who have struggles.
When I first decided in my late teens and early 20s that I wasn't going to be angry any more it was a life shifting thing for me. It completely changed the way I viewed the world. Now I say this like the curtain fell and sunshine came in and all was sunny and light and rainbows and unicorns from that point forward and that's not how it worked at all. The first year Brent and I were married was rough. I was still extremely angry with my family and that took a long time to fade away. I would say it was probably a good decade before I could really look at my childhood and say that it was mostly good with a small pocket of bad. And there have been many times over the years when I stopped making the choice to be happy and paid the price.
That's the thing about choosing happiness. You actually have to do it. And it can get away from you. Work is a tough one. We get wrapped up in jobs and careers and sometimes end up working in a place that isn't a good fit, or has other issues with it and we are miserable there. But we tell ourselves that we can't change. That we have to do it, for the money, the security, the insurance and so we "suck it up" and deal with it. I talked about this when I wrote my work blog series. And I also talked about my last job when I was at my most miserable I got a reminder that I was making the choice to be miserable. That the situation wasn't great, the people around me could be awful at times but my reaction to them was on me. And when I made a change in my behavior, things started to shift. My choice.
If you ask me about living in Colorado Springs I will tell you I was miserable. It was not my cup of tea. I loved Oregon but we made the choice to leave because it would be good for Brent's career and it would move us closer to our family. My parents were getting older, my dad's health wasn't the best and I wanted to be able to have C get a chance to get to know them better. Things didn't start well. Our house up here didn't sell so we missed out on buying a few places that came on the market that we really liked. The house we ended up in was in a decent school district with a wonderful view of Pike's Peak but I didn't like anything else about it. Our first weekend there my car was hit in a parking lot by a woman who wanted us to lie to the insurance and say her husband was driving so that was a big mess. We wouldn't, of course, she did, it all worked out but it was crazy. Brent decided to go ahead and get his MBA while we were there so he ended up working very long hours at work as he site managed the construction job and then added a pretty full course load on top of that so he wasn't home much. When he was home he was stressed from not enough time and having to deal with a wife who was not happy about the time he wasn't there. C was busy in school and out of it so I was running him from activity to activity and also working myself. The politics in CS don't match mine nor does the fact that it's home to Focus on the Family so when people would ask you "what church do you attend?" and your response was "we don't" it could get a little frosty. My parents didn't make the trip up to CS like I had assumed they would. We saw them 3 times in the Springs in the years that we lived there. So I ended up miserable, bitter, angry, not talking to my husband about why I was so mad because what good would that do, not happy.
But here is the other story of Colorado Springs. C went to a school that was home to the best teacher he ever had. She was the one who taught us how to teach him. She was his advocate through the talented and gifted program. Working together they helped to actually redesign the testing process. She told us that she really felt that all of her training had led her on a path to meet C and she felt blessed to have been part of his life. How wonderful is that? He was able to attend enrichment programs through Colorado College that were the best he's ever been to. He learned how to play trumpet while in CS which led him to years of musical enjoyment including attending a performing arts high school where he was able to make close friends and thrive in a small school environment. Brent was able to earn his advanced degree which opened up so many more doors for him at Intel including the position he holds now. I was cured of my vertigo through what was a brand new procedure at the time because the physical therapist who had developed it spoke at a luncheon that the nurse practitioner I saw happened to go to. If we hadn't been in CS and she hadn't been thinking of me at that luncheon who knows when or if I would have been able to be cured of that, and believe you me, that's a life changer right there! Brent's parents came up at least four times a year and also because we were close actually took C for a Spring Break so he could stay with them one on one. Losing Brent's dad at such a young age I am extremely grateful now for that time. We also lived close enough that when my sister-in-law's mother died I was able to drive down and be with her. And the last piece, after reaching the bottom with communication in our relationship when I finally told Brent I was miserable he did this really wild thing, he helped me make it better.
Looking back at that time I wonder how much of it I could have changed just by making a different choice earlier. I didn't choose to be happy during that stretch. In fact I seemed to be actively choosing to be miserable. Instead of telling Brent I was floundering and unhappy I just stopped talking to him about what I was feeling. He knew I wasn't bouncing around pleased, but he had no idea how miserable I was. Because I didn't tell him. And because that's not my normal personality. Instead of being mad that my parents weren't making the choice to come see us like I had hoped I should have just been grateful for the time with Brent's parents. And I should have been glad for the times we made the trip down to NM to see them instead of resenting the fact that they didn't reciprocate. My niece lives there now, she holds similar political and religious beliefs (probably not as extreme as mine but similar) and she has found friends that she is close with and is pretty content there. She made a different set of choices.
But it was a learning experience. I will tell you I was miserable there. But I will also tell you that it was my fault I was miserable there. Because I wasn't choosing to be happy.
So now that I've spent an entire blog on things you already knew I will wrap it up with one mind blowing (to me) piece of information. The entire time I was miserable in high school, at work, in Colorado Springs the people I knew and interacted with would tell you that I was a nice happy person. How can this be? I was miserable. I was angry. I was pissed at the world at different points. How could they think anything differently?
Well because they were right. I was a happy person. And in the next blog I will dive deeper in to why.
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