High highs, low lows…

I wrote this quote a couple of years ago. I remember trying to write those lists. The lows were pretty easy, but the highs, I wasn’t

sure I had any. No children, so I couldn’t say the birth of my children. Failed marriages, so I felt like that was off limits. No travels.

I know I’ve achieved a lot given my health circumstances, yet I really struggle to lists my highs.

I think it’s because I don’t see accolades as highs. Maybe I wasn’t praised enough as a child. I remember the negative words, not so much the positives. I’m sure there were positives, but criticism were far more prevalent.

I also remember being consumed by issues, for the longest time, just ruminating over them.

I look back now and feel self centred for obsessing over my issues. Everyone had them, yet I allowed mine to be all consuming.

In my early 40’s I had a neighbour. A well off family that only visited every few months, it was their holiday home. They would pop over for a chat and a catch up. I’d bang on about my health, the wife always comforting, kind.

I found out a couple of years later, the entire time she had been battling breast cancer, yet not a single word of her plight. I felt so guilty, ashamed of myself for being so self indulgent.

A year or two prior to that I was emailing with a close older girlfriend, complaining about my then husband not defending me enough in certain situations. He was a great guy, we’re still besties. He just didn’t deal with issues head on like I did. My girlfriend replied with, ‘if he was to approach situations like you do, he wouldn’t put up with your shit’.  I was hurt for a hot minute, but I knew she hadn’t meant to offend me, she was just being honest, and she was right.

Those two encounters, really changed who I was as a person. Gave me a better perspective on life, on myself. It makes me wish I hadn’t spent so much time caught up in situations that were never going to change, because it now seems like wasted life, stressing. But I guess that’s the nature of life. Well mine at least.

So I think my highs are more about life lessons. Light bulb moments.

Before I came to that realisation, my list consisted of seeing whales, falling stars, the yellow flowers that bloom all over the mountainside each year. Simple things. The moments.

Was I to write the lists now, after much therapy, and eventual self actualisation, I think the lists would be much simpler task.