One Year Later...

One year ago today, my life was forever changed. Usually what follows a sentence like that is something about marrying the love of your life, or giving birth to a beautiful baby. I don't have a happy ending for my sentence. One year ago today my mom fell and hit her head on the concrete driveway, causing a bleed in her brain. What followed after was a long and incomplete recovery, the destruction of my relationship with my parents, the rise of alcoholism in my dad, a long and pointless legal battle, and basically a trip through hell, one in which I am still waiting for the "and back again" part. One year later and not much is better, it is simply far, far worse than I ever could have imagined it would be.

When I sat down to write this, I realized this can't be how my story ends. This glass-half-empty girl, can't have a completely empty glass at the end of all this. I have to find some good. I have to fill my glass. So here's the good that has come out of the past year of my life.

I have realized I am far stronger than I ever would have known. At least a dozen times over the past year I have said to Troy, "I can't take any more. This is my limit." And then there would be more. So I've come to know that no matter what hell comes my way, I may hate it, and I may wish with everything I have for it to get better, but if it doesn't, I will continue to exist and plow through each and every day.

I found faith this past year. For most of my life, I have had a kind of on-again-off-again relationship with God. Through high school and college I went from being involved in church to not involved and back and forth. After college, I became somewhat anti-organized religion. I viewed it as historically a way to control the masses, get people to behave the way the powers that be wanted them to through the threat of exclusion. This past year, the relationship got even more dicey. For awhile, I was angry at God for allowing everything to happen. I mean really angry. But the more I went to church (for Jack's involvement, initially), and the more people who told me they were praying for me, the more I would feel moments of peace. I've come to realize, and am trying to accept, that while God let those things happen, He gave me the strength and the people to get me through them.

I have forged a bond with my sister that is, I am certain, unbreakable. My sister and I were close to begin with. Ever since I moved back to St. Joe, across the street from her, we had been getting closer and becoming even better friends. We knew about each other's pregnancies before the rest of the world knew, we had numerous conversations that started, "I couldn't tell anyone else this, but…" and we talked probably more days than not. But we went through this past year together in a way no one else could. It was truly a shared experience. They are our parents, and no one else had that common thread, or so much emotional investment, as the two of us. We may have lost the rest of our immediate family, but I will never feel alone for the rest of my life. I have my sister.

Finally, I gained the courage to change my life this past year. I had hated my job for so long. But change was scary for me. I came to a point where I realized I no longer had anything to lose. I had to get out of St. Joe. I couldn't continue to be the first responder to my parents' numerous emergencies simply because I was the closest one there. I couldn't continue to wonder who all knew the gossip going around town about my dad and his drinking, or my brother and his various jail sentences. I found and went after another job. And I love it. It took having nothing to lose, for me to be open to having something to gain.

So a year later, I resolve to be more aware of how full my glass is. Maybe the glass-half-empty girl you have come to know is evolving. I may not always see my glass the right way, but after everything I have gone through, there are certainly days when I realize that my cup runneth over.