Day 11 Question 11:

Who is the most important person/people in your life?  Why?

I am just one person in this silly, overcrowded world.  I am one person with a very big voice that is screaming while her lips are sewn shut.  I wish I could record my thoughts sometimes.  There will be times when I am driving and the most magical, real, raw thoughts pass through my mind.  These are the thoughts that make me feel alive.  Even if some of these thoughts tug at my heart strings.  I will be all alone in my state of bliss becomes it all seems clear in just one moment.  It’s strange (and probably potentially dangerous) that these thoughts seem to happen a lot when I am driving.

I just saw the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  First and foremost this movie was absolutely phenomenal.  This is one of those movies that makes you really look at life through different lenses (if you have a soul that is).  I will not give anything in the movie away except I will say that the premise is a son that loses his father in 9/11.  There have been documentaries and news clips that have run over and over again reminding us of this horrible and tragic day.  None of these are ever easy to watch but it was this movie that really made me want to look into the lives of others.  It’s strange because I have always felt inside of me that there is something I am looking for but I don’t know what that thing is and what it is I am searching for will give me a really important answer.  Although life is about the journey, I love thinking about the journey to find something.  This movie touched me in a way that made me really want to stop taking things for granted.  This movie made me understand so much what a true hero is.  This movie made me want to lean over to my mom (her and I had a girls night) and say, “Please don’t ever die, I am scared to lose you.”   I can’t even write those words without the tears falling from my eyes.

I wasn’t sure what question to answer today.  I bounced back and forth between a few and decided that after seeing this movie and feeling what I felt that I had to express certain things.  Its cliché to say but my parents are truly my heroes.   I am absolutely petrified of losing them because I think I will completely lose myself.  My parents are older.  I am 33 and they are 72 and 73.  If you do the math you will probably assume correctly that I wasn’t exactly on the agenda.  My mother had my oldest sister Jill in 1969.  After this she had 2 miscarriages and found out she had endometriosis and her chances of conceiving another child were extremely thin so my parents adopted my middle sister.  Well four years later by great surprise here I came.  I like to think of myself as a miracle <wink wink>.  So now you know the background.  Having parents that are older is difficult sometimes.  There is a big generation gap and they never seem to understand my choices or even my politics (dad).  This never mattered though, they have loved me unconditionally every single day of my life and I know they will until their passing days.  There are a million things I love about my parents.  I, obviously won’t list them all because that would go on for days.  I will share some of the high points however.  The things that matter the most.

I wish I could say all of these things to my parents.  I struggle saying these things though because sometimes I feel uncomfortable with my emotions.  I am not always sure how to handle them.  I start feeling uncomfortable and awkward and it all starts to feel unnatural and forced.  This is a hurdle I am working to get over.  Maybe one day I will but for now I will write them down.  Maybe one day they will read it.  I hope they do.  I hope even after they read it that they knew all along how I felt even if I didn’t show it, even if I pushed them to the limits and screamed and hollered at them.

My father is the most incredible man in my life for so many reasons.  My father is a spectator and an absolute genius.  A lot of people have pegged my father as being really shy or stuck up because he is not a big talker.  I have never seen my dad in either of those lights.  I always viewed my dad as an observer.  No, there were times that he may not have said much but I knew he was taking in the situation.  I knew my dad was learning from others and reading their body language and truly listening to what they had to say.  This, in my opinion, is an amazingly admirable quality.  Listening is a skill that a lot of people have lost and my father has perfected it.  My dad did not always express himself vocally (and we share this similarity in certain ways) but there were things that we knew that were always unspoken.  He may not be one to say I love you with ease or say he was proud of us but he never had to because I already knew it.  My father has always felt way more than he had lead on and I have always felt like one of the biggest accomplishments in his life (even if I may have said differently).  My dad truly made me feel like I could do anything and I don’t know if he has ever known that.   Although the topics and the issues may be different, I have the same passion in me that my dad has in him.  When we believe in something we believe in it with all that we have.   There have been times that I knew my dad hated his job or hated where he was living but I truly hope that he has experienced a great deal of happiness in his life.  I hope he has known and continues to know until his last breath what a truly wonderful soul he is.  He will always be my hero.

Ok, it was very difficult for me to write that last paragraph.  The tears streamed down my face the entire time but I am really in for it now.  My mother.  Oh what I could say about my mother.  My mother has saved me.  She has rescued me time and time again.  My mother is the platform of my existence.  I hate to say this but no other mother can possibly compare to mine (ok I know that is totally just my opinion).  She is hands down the best person in the whole wide world.  I truly believe that the world would be a much better place if there were more people like her in it.  I have watched my mother (without her realizing it) and have never seen someone give out as much unconditional love as she can.  I honestly do not know how she does it.  My mother has told me stories of her life and some of them involved some serious hardships and emotional pain.  If you met my mother you would never know it though.  My mother loves everyone that comes into her life.  I get my compassionate and empathetic nature from my mother.  My mother wants to hear everyone’s story and by the end of the story she has her arms wrapped so tight around you.  When you are with my mother, no matter what the circumstance, you always know everything is going to be ok.  My mother has and always will push her own issues aside to help you with yours.  I have had anxiety issues for over 15 years now and I have been on and off medicine throughout that time.  When I was a junior in college I left school for 2 weeks because I had a “nervous breakdown”.  I literally felt like I was losing my mind.  It was as if my mind and body were completely disconnected and I hit a wall.  I stayed in this state for about a week and a half before getting medicated and getting the rest that I needed.  My mother was there for me for every single second of it.  If I woke up in the middle of the night having an anxious fit she was there to talk to me or brush my hair back and wipe the tears from my eyes.  She looked at me at one point and said, “I wish I could take your pain away and give it to myself.”  My mom was the true definition of what a mother should be.  She would walk through fire to protect us.  She loved so much that it was painful.  She has been and continues to be a blessing in the lives of so many people.  I fear losing her.  I have moments when I am by myself when I feel my heart sink thinking about the day that she will no longer be there.  That day is unimaginable.  I do not want to make it about me but I am afraid that I will shut down again and I will have such intense anxiety and I don’t know if it will stop because she will not be there to talk me through it.  I am afraid I may no longer be able to speak because I don’t know if anything else will be worth saying because I can no longer share my thoughts with my mother.  I cannot imagine this incredible person that gave me life no longer being a part of mine.  Just the thought itself destroys me.  I want her to live forever.  I want her to know how much she has meant to me and how sorry I am for the times I have screamed and yelled and blamed her for things that deep down I knew were not her fault-they were my fears and insecurities.  I want to thank her for being this amazing role model and lover of life.  I want to hold her tight and tell her how she has inspired me in ways she had no idea about.   My mom has believed in me when I never believed in myself and because of my mother I am way stronger of a person that I ever realized.  My mother has this beauty about her that is so rare to find.  It is almost as if negativity does not exist in my mother.  No matter what the situation is, she will smile through it-even (like I always am) if she is dying on the inside.  I admire my mother because her life has never been all about her.  Her life has always been about making others happy and sharing with others and giving whatever she can to help others through their hard times.  I really cannot ever recall my mother ever asking for help or expecting anything from others.  Hands down my mother is the most selfless person I have ever encountered.  I believe there is a strong chance I would even say this if she wasn’t my mother-if she was a random person that happened to be part of my life in some way or another.  I know deep down that my mother has had struggles in her life and she has not always loved herself but it never showed on the outside.  She has always pulled herself up from her bed and put one foot in front of the other every single day.  She refused to be defeated even if some days felt like absolute torture.  I get my fight, determination and belief from my mother.  I hope my mother knows all of these things.  I hope she has many more years and so many more people are able to meet and experience this wonderful woman because as cheesy as it may sound, she really is a gift.  I love her with everything in me and when the day comes where she is no longer here I know I am going to feel broken and absolutely destroyed but I know I have her fight in me and I know she would not want me to live in a bubble.  She would not want me to stop living this life of creativity and wonder that she knows how much I love.  She is my everything and I hope she is able to read this at least once if not 1,000 times so she will always know how much I love her and how much she truly has meant to me.

For those of you that are reading this entry, I cannot express the difficulty in writing this.  I was overwhelmed with emotions, and I would not consider that a bad thing at all.  If anything, it felt extremely healthy and natural.  I write for reasons such as this.  I write because these are the thoughts and the emotions that I have and when I put them out into words on a screen I am able to see myself and see what a beautiful life I am living.  So, please if you are reading this, I have no idea what your life is like (well some I might but generally speaking) and I have no idea who plays significant roles in your lives but I ask of you to take a moment –if you can’t necessarily express how you feel to these people then take the time to reflect and do something that lets them know what they mean to you.  Life is far too short and busy and crowded to take important things like this for granted.  Life is about love.  Don’t let that slip away because you are too busy.  Telling someone I love you or thanking them for being a part of your life only takes seconds.  We all have five seconds available.  Thank you so much for reading everything that you have.  I truly cannot express how it makes me feel.  Wonderful does not even give the feeling justice.  I send all of you my love!