Where to begin?

I have gone back and forth on how to separate all the emotions I have gone through since finding out about my cancer, going through it all, and what's next for me. But more than that, I have desperately tried to condense the past 4-ish years into a tiny, neatly wrapped box to describe what has genuinely been the most challenging period of my life so far. I haven't been able to articulate any of it in a way that conveys my experience in an understandable way that would make sense to anyone except myself. It all feels so linear but, at the same time, scattered like dust in a field. 

One thing that I know about myself is that creating, in almost any way, is a way that I unwrap and understand things. I must pick it apart and lay it out there to see visually, and then I can grasp it.

One thing I haven't done since everything happened is to be creative. There's been a tremendous feeling of "what's the point?" because I have an impossible time envisioning any future for myself (more on that later), so creating feels like an empty promise. I don't know how else to explain that. Some people may understand what I mean. I have been in such a state of survival, and when you're in a state of survival, anything outside of what is necessary to live seems frivolous and extravagant. It won't feed me or my kids. It won't solve my problems. It won't get me where I need... 

Or will it?

I've gently reminded myself that part of being on this earth is that you have no choice but to be part of the human experience. And folks, I am having a VERY human experience. One thing that has always helped me gain perspective during even the worst of times, times when I felt that no one could possibly know what I'm going through, when I have felt like my experience is entirely unique and isolated, is reading or listening to someone else talk about precisely what I'm going through or have gone through. Sometimes, in the luckiest circumstances, they come out the other side. And sometimes they don't.

All of the large and small things we go through in life, the loud, harsh, delicate, intricate, and messy things... they all collectively push and pull, bend and mold, scrape, pack, and build the person you see every time you look in the mirror. We're all just an assemblage of moments and our collective reactions to them. You don't get to pick what happens to you in life. I do not believe that prayer changes anything (edited to add: I do and always will appreciate when someone takes the time to pray for me because I see it as an act of love), that you can manifest your perfect life, or that any of us are predestined to have better lives than anyone else. I believe that we are capable of reacting to the circumstances that we are given and making a series of decisions that steer us in the direction we'd like to go, physical or mental. Things will happen to you. There is no way around that. 

Some things- many things- will happen to you, things you did not ask for, things you did not attract, things you have no control over. But how do you deal with them?

That is our human experience. 

Navigating the twists and turns. There are going to be so many. I had no idea. You could not have told 18-year-old me that I would have the life I have lived. I never would have been able to grasp all the things that were coming my way.

But I am alive right now, and I am ever so thankful because I absolutely love being here. As many hard things as I have had to happen in my life, I am still so very in love with being alive and experiencing all there is to this world. Even when my brain tells me otherwise, I want to be here. 

And with that, I plan on making it my stable and steadfast routine, once again, to share my thoughts and creative outlets here on this blog... a blog I have lovingly dubbed I'm Just Happy To Be Here.