My Heart Hurts So Good
Warning soft blog post. Presently in my life, I have been working on a group project through school with a community partner that has brought up many emotions and thoughts about the people I am surrounded with, how I interact in my daily life and life in general. This has caused this post to be more sappy than usual. For all the students out there dealing with final projects, applying for internships or anyone stressed out of their minds, this is for you.
I have a fascination with time. As simple as knowing what time it is or what time I have to be up at or what time I need to go to bed at to get enough sleep. It’s apparent in life time is always ticking, it’s always counting down; time moves at the same speed whether you want it to move faster or slower, it’s the same. Have you ever felt that the time in your day is running out or your running from place to place or task-to-task trying to keep up with time? Lately I have felt like I am racing with time, but time and I will end at the same place. One of my dreaded fears is looking back on my life and saying I didn’t have enough time.
I recently saw a picture of my girlfriends and I in Cabo, Mexico, from six years ago. I said to them, that was back in 2010, and then it occurred to me that 2010 was six years ago, six! I still think 2008 was last year and continue to think I am 19 years old, when in reality I am 24 plus 2 years… I can’t help but look back on these last six years. It’s such a nostalgic feeling when you reflect on your life. It’s remarkable that we don’t usually reminisce about the stressful times. We reminisce about how one of your idiot friends got so drunk in Cabo that she had to get a wheel chair to take her back to her room (you know who you are) or flashing for free beer. We never remember the stress, the pain or any of the wear and tear of life, we think about the good, the fun. Do you think our minds just black out the bad? If you have ever gotten a tattoo can you actually remember the pain? Or if you have ever had a child, typically mothers don’t remember the actual physical pain. Think about it, why would we continue getting tattoos or having babies if we remembered how much it hurt. We surround ourselves with people and things that bring the good, that bring the joy, the fun and in times of bad those people and things help alleviate the bad. Think about your life over the last six years. What, or who, have you done, who have you met, what has changed? What’s stayed the same? Who’s come into your life that changed it for the good? I love the quote from Wicked, “because I met you, I have changed for good.” There are times I look at my close friends and I think, what if I had never met you, and in that moment I thank my lucky stars that I have.
The project my team and I have been working on for school is a video dedicated to remembering and commemorating a woman who has unfortunately passed away. Learning about her and how she lived her life has been a “paramount experience,” as she used to say. She was a public relations student as well, and as my group and community partner have been discussing her life, we asked what she would say to us while enduring school stressors. Their response was she would say, “fuck it, it’ll get done,” they described to us that she was always having fun, you could be in a bad mood and she would come into the classroom and within minutes, even seconds, your mood was changed. She never took life or school too seriously because it would impact her ability to laugh, crack jokes and in its simplest forms, to have fun.
There’s the answer, fun. I can’t help but think that time is passing anyways, no matter what we are doing, stressed or not stressed, time moves, so do you think we might as well have a little fun while it does? My Father, who now lives a life of leisure and merriment, used to be the managing editor for the Calgary Herald. To this day he will say to me, “in my hay day at the Herald I had a blast, I would walk around the newsroom and be crackin’ jokes, I mean I would get work done but man did I have fun.” My Father might be one of the most hilarious people I know, so it doesn’t surprise me when I run into people he used to work with and they’ll say, “I used to work with your Dad, he used to prank call me all the time,” and they would laugh. Laughter, have you ever been so stressed out that you just needed a good laugh. Can you think of a time you laughed the hardest? Laughing so hard you want to it to stop because your face is hurting and you have tears streaming down it. I think that hardest I have ever laughed was when I was in Vegas with my two girlfriends and Briare, the impossible idiot that she is, never made me laugh so hard.
I will leave you with this last story from my Vegas trip, which at this point in my life I can honestly say I have never laughed so hard. Third day in Vegas, Briare and I were walking the strip, Shaunda had to go back to the hotel because she was feeling ‘ill,’ could have been from the hundred vodka sodas she drank the night before, we still don’t know. Anyways we walk into New York New York, have a tiny buzz on, and walk over to this store that will put your face on another person’s body, bodies from hot model bodies or celebrities etc. I’m flipping through the book and I see two men bodies posing. I look at Briare and say, “this is it,” she looks at me and nods. The owner says to us, “you are aware those are two guys”, we go, “yes, now take our damn picture.” Once we had the final copy of the photo we were hysterical, Briare had literally fallen to the ground laughing. We laughed the entire way back to Treasure Island, and I’m still laughing two years later. Cherish those moments that keep you laughing again and again; they’ll get you through your stress-filled days.
Like my good friend Ferris Bueller says, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in while, you could miss it.”
XOXO Witty Kitty