For now Part 1

Put your past in your behind
       (The Lion King)

I am the sum of my story. 

Who I am today is a result of each day that has led me to this point. 
                 Births
  deaths                                 hurts
                             joys                             celebrations 
               tears                       victories                          mistakes 
                     choices                     places
   people                         lessons

...these things have made me me.

But what if I decided that that was all there is? That the things that have happened were the only things that mattered. What if I lived longing for the happy times that once were? What if I let the hurts determine my attitude.

I've struggled with living in the past, with letting it define me. I've given myself labels - 'child of divorce', 'runaway', 'rejected friend'. For a long time, my tag line, the thing that described me best could have been "I have issues". I can't count the number of times I told people that. And it was true. I did have issues, but the biggest issue I had was that I didn't want to let go of my issues. I held on to them tightly, until they became so engrained in me, that I didn't have a clue how to deal with them.

I don't think I'm alone. 
The guilty live bound by the mistakes of their past.
The bitter live trapped by the injustice they've suffered in the past. 
The self-pitying live under the weight of past hurts.
The disappointed live clinging to past hope that has been lost. 
The hopeless live fighting with past failures.

But the wise, they live in the light of the past, letting it explain but not define who they are. Looking to the past can be a powerful thing if we use it in the right way. Who you are now may bear the scars of the past, but that's ok. A scar is a memory of a healed wound. It is part of you but it does not affect you like a raw and tender open wound. There is no shame in a scar, but just make sure you don't keep picking the top off the scab, not allowing the wound to heal. 

The past happened. 
      Now it's time to heal. 
 It is up to you what you let 
                          define 
                              control 
                                    bind you. 
             Don't let it be something which is no more.

Makes you think...

I had just come home from a university open day. My friend, Kirsty, and I had got the train to Jordanstown, had a bit of a look around, decided that yes, we probably did want to study physio, and then got the train home. We had a good talk on the train. I wasn't in a great place and Kirsty was listening to my pain and my ranting. 

Seemed like an insignificant day...

I got home and turned the TV on while I pottered around my room. I was casually changing channels, trying to find something other than the news to watch. It wasn't long before I realised that the news was on every channel. Something was going on. Something pretty big. 

I wasn't a very emotional person, I didn't cry easily, but I remember standing in front of my TV, watching the Twin Towers collapsing after the planes flew into them and I remember tears running down my face. Something about watching those reports was so real. The reporters standing there, trying to report this tragic news, all the while, in shock, not really sure what was going on, not knowing where or when another attack might come. 

I wasn't directly affected by the attacks, not like so many people were, but eleven years on, I remember those feelings. The world changed that day. I was 17, I had lived a pretty sheltered life, but all of a sudden, nothing really felt secure any more. People started talking about another world war breaking out. People were scared to get on planes. Airport security went crazy. 

It made me think. Made me reassess. What was important to me? What was I scared of? What was I scared of losing? What mattered? Who mattered? I think those are pretty good questions to ask every now and then. I hope it doesn't take a tragedy like that to make me ask them again. 

What I learned from Disney

"What screws us up most in life is the picture in our head of how it's supposed to be"

When I was growing up, I knew what my life was going to look like...I would live with a happy family, go to school, have good friends, go to university to study something I loved, probably fall in love while I was at uni, find a secure job that I enjoyed every day, get married by the time I was 25, pop out a few kids and live happily ever after.

It was a good plan
                          ...if only life had followed the script.

I didn't plan for my parents to get divorced, to have to move to another school because of bullying, to dislike uni so much that I contemplated dropping out, to move to the other side of the world, to still be single, to be made redundant.

I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me, not at all. I don't feel sorry for me, because I guess what I'm saying is that, just because things haven't turned out as I imagined they would, doesn't mean they haven't turned out in the best possible way, the way they were meant to.

You know what I think? I think a lot of the pictures in our heads of what lives is supposed to look like come from Disney movies. It's so easy to blur the line between real life and 'happily ever after' lives when that's what we watch growing up.

Here's a quick run down of things I learned from Disney movies...

Cinderella - if you just accept all the bad stuff that happens, eventually the good stuff will come.
Unfortunately, the amount of bad stuff you go through doesn't determine the amount of good stuff you'll get. Life just doesn't work that way. Sometimes you actually have to work for the good stuff and stand up for yourself in the bad.
Also, glass shoes are going to give you blisters.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - a kiss fixes all your problems. Well, maybe not just a kiss, but true love's first kiss. Um, no. Sometimes it just gives you more problems.
And it's usually not ok for a girl to live with seven men.

The Little Mermaid - you need to change your appearance, give up your talents, your home and family to get the guy. But surely it's all worth it, because that's all that matters, right? Or not.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame - the ugly guy won't get the girl. Sure, he can be the hero and save her, but she's still going to run off with the hot one. Good old Disney, all about the beauty.

The beautiful princess waits around for years until her prince comes to rescue her. They kiss and then her life is complete and all that's left is happily ever after.

No wonder we have such distorted images of how life should be. So, what do we do with that? I think we just need to know that movies, any movies, are a product of some scriptwriter's creativity. The characters say the right things because it's in the script. Don't you hate it when you have a conversation planned out in your head and the other person doesn't stick to the script?

I love Disney movies and I'm not going to stop watching them but we also need to step back into reality, to accept that life doesn't always turn out how we thought it would, but that doesn't make it any less beautiful or fulfilling.

Maybe happily ever afters aren't all they're cracked up to be.