Live Like You Mean It
I’m hesitant to share this story. Not because I don’t want people to know it, many people already do. But because this story is about death. Loss. Heartbreak.
But it’s more of a story about learning to live…
When you tell others your stories of loss and heartbreak you usually get pity in return. They feel bad that you have experienced such hard feelings. They tell you they are sorry you have lost someone so dear and try to provide comfort by wishing you didn’t have to experience these feelings.
That has never felt like the right response to me. I’m still not sure what a better response is but I know that “sorry for your loss” is not always the best thing to say.
Maybe because that puts all the focus on the fact that the person is gone. Maybe because apologies feel like they require some sort of forgiveness.
So now, not only am processing an unimaginable amount of grief, I must also try to comfort you in your feelings of pity towards my experiences.
I am hesitant to share this because I don’t want the apologies for this part of my life. I am who I am because of this. No one should feel sorry for that.
Without this experience my life would be so different. While I appreciate your sympathies, without this loss and navigating it as authentically as possible I could, I would be a completely different person.
The grief felt impossible for many years. And I miss him every single day. Still. I cry as I write this because my heart is still sad. But my life has been richer for having him the time I did. So for that, not a single person should be sorry.
I was doing some writing prompts and one asked “how did you get here?” This was in the context of business but for me the “business” I am working towards is simply sharing my stories so others can find comfort, community, or inspiration.
But the answer to how I got here truly starts with this.
The answer to how I got here started at 3am on a Friday morning in April, my senior year of high school. When the text message argument I was in with my boyfriend ended abruptly.
What I thought was him just being done arguing, I would learn later that morning was actually the last moments of his life. His friend was driving. Way too fast. Slightly drunk. A road they had driven dozens of times. But he took the curve in the road too fast. 100+ miles per hour. He lost control of the car. We lost them both. But I without a single doubt in my mind know I have never lost him.
His spirit. His presence has been, sometimes annoyingly, all around me since that day. There was a period of time where voicemails I had left him on his phone started getting sent back to mine. One time I said “I can feel you here, but show me you’re still here” and the street light I was passing immediately turned on in the middle of the afternoon. This has been followed with lights turning on and off around me ever since. Songs stopping in the middle and changing to one of his favorites, even songs I don’t have saved on my phone have been known to pop up. Things like this still happening 16 years later.
He has taught me so much about death. And how we’re never really gone.
But the most important thing he taught me was how to dream. We would get in arguments because he didn’t think I was dreaming big enough. Mostly because at that point in my life I didn’t really dream at all. Something he could relate to personally from experience.
He had so many big plans. So many outrageous dreams. Dreams he knew may never happen but he was going to try to get to them anyway. Dreams he regularly admitted he took too much time to start working towards. He said he wasted years on feeling bad about making the wrong choice. He said he wasted time thinking things weren’t possible. Or that he didn’t deserve them. He didn’t want me to waste time like he had. He was finally starting to move toward making his dreams happen.
Then he was gone. And it changed everything for me.
What if I don’t get the time to try for my dreams either?
We only get a little bit of time to be humans. I wasn’t willing to waste any more of it worrying about the outcome. Or why I shouldn’t try.
He waited. And then he didn’t get the chance.
It wasn’t even a conscious choice. I never had one of those movie moments, vowing to live my life to fullest in his honor.
It was a fundamental shift in how I saw the world.
He had lived in the way the world told him too. Letting the desires of his heart sit tucked away. He had just started to uncover that things can be different. Life can be whatever he wanted it to be. He was just getting started making it all happen.
When I lost him I knew I would take the things he taught me and I would really live. I would live on purpose. Take chances. Trust that the desires on my heart wouldn’t have been put there if I wasn’t meant to have them.
I was going to try things just to see what happened. I wouldn’t regret anything because that was just a waste of my precious time. I was going to allow myself to dream and to believe that this life gets to be whatever we want it to be.
I started to see everything differently.
Everything good in my life has happened because I took a chance. I jumped. I didn’t let my mind talk me out of what my heart wanted. I trusted. I dreamed. I tried everything. I didn’t focus on the possible outcomes. I appreciated the things that didn’t work out quite right.
This looked like quitting college, twice. Getting involved with a guy I had previously despised. One who was in the military and I had no idea what that would look like long term. Moving to Florida to be near that guy after only dating a year. Leaving jobs when they felt wrong even if I hadn’t been there long or others told me they were great jobs. Getting new cars when people told me it wasn’t what they would choose. Dying my hair “secret purple” because I wanted purple but wasn’t supposed to at my work. Deciding to run a triathlon with zero athletic abilities. Jumping into Network Marketing companies I loved when people constantly judged them. Learning to go places alone instead of sitting at home like a hermit. Becoming a dance teacher when all I was trying to do was take some ballet classes myself. Writing and learning how to self-publish books. Pitching speaking opportunities.
It’s not that I have some special super-human confidence in myself or my abilities. It’s that I have an urgency with which I live. Because loss taught me early on that my time is limited and should not be wasted.
My mortality was pointed out to me at an early age and has shown me I need to live with a little gusto.
That’s how I got here. My life, the way I live it now, started the minute he was gone. If he couldn’t be here to dream for himself, I would dream for him. I would try the things he never got to. I would go the places and see the things he never got to. I would actually take his advice and not waste any time worrying about anything other than my dreams.
I would live like I meant it.
And I would share those stories, his and mine, so that others might start to see what’s possible for themselves.
I hope you find that here. I hope you find hope. I hope you get excited about the possibilities of life.
I hope you start to live like you mean it, too.
Love you big,
Jessi.
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