Life. It can get a little tough sometimes…

I came to a point with my last blog where I finally thought, “What should I write about next?”. I hope you guys know I’m not slam full of sky diving stories! So I can’t keep telling all my great adventure stories and use them all up before I make any new ones! My past is very important to who I am today but it does not define the person I am and it most certainly doesn’t allow any of you guys to know some of the things that go on in my mind today.

I am certainly thankful and happy everyone has enjoyed my blog thus far and so very happy some of you have been inspired. But I must admit, I don’t always feel inspiring. Quite frankly, I often feel defeated and overwhelmed. Lately, I’ve asked myself multiple times, have I set my goals too high, am I worthy of this support, am I really a good role model, and am I capable of this load I have created for myself?

Fear. Fear is the force that controls those thoughts. Fear leads to doubt. Doubt makes you feel like you’re not capable. Before I allow fear to send me down that road with those thoughts I am smart enough to quickly answer my own questions before I let doubt take a home in my head. I am, I can, I will!

I know that those moments of defeat will creep up on me but I know they will pass and everything will be okay in the end. There are some people out there that don’t always know there is a light at the end of every tunnel we are faced with. I hope a few of those people will stumble across this post. It’s meant to be real. For all of us.

The daily tasks of life add up as do bills, quickly! Throw in a few problems like a flat tire, a coffee spill, or an AC unit that went out in mid-summer and it can easily begin to feel like you’re losing at the game we called life. Throw in a kid or two that you are also responsible for. You may feel just successful at the end of the day because everyone is still alive but in the back of your mind you imagine yourself as the worst mother on the planet and you have no idea how these other mommies look so well kept and perfectly rested. Well, I’m here to let you know you’re not the worst mom and I assure you those other moms are probably looking at you and wondering how you are doing it flawlessly as well!

I’m not a mom. I know the load on mommies and daddies shoulders out there is much, much, much heavier than any I have ever had to bear. I struggle and complain over making my own dinner, doing my own dishes, washing, drying, folding and putting away my own laundry and taking out my own trash. I get stressed over letting my dog out enough or making sure she is bathed once a week. I get annoyed with cleaning the toilet and scrubbing the tub. I get overwhelmed with light bills and water bills and the non-stop thought of my grocery lists. I am doing all of these things for one person, not 2, not 3, or 4! I look up to anyone who is a parent that is trying their very best. I don’t think I could carry the responsibilities that come with parenting. Cheers to you guys!

To some people I seem like a person that has my life together and one who is almost always happy, but there are indeed times I feel like breaking. There have been plenty of times when I have felt like I have bitten off more than I was capable of chewing. There were plenty of times in my first few semesters of college in which I wanted to give up. I have had bad days at work when I was uncertain if I was capable of making it through the rest of the week because I was just simply exhausted. I have had many times in my life where I felt like a bad teacher, an unconcerned friend, a bad girlfriend, an absent aunt, and a child that didn’t make her parents proud.

You can ask my parents because I’m sure they could make a list of times they wanted to spank me as an adult. I’ve not always welcomed their concern for me with open arms in many situations. In their perspective they are trying to help but through my perspective I have thought they were being overbearing. Perspective is a topic that could be a whole other blog one day maybe. However, I hope I am not the only person that has allowed my perspective to treat someone poorly when they didn’t deserve it. I think my parents know me well enough to know I don’t mean harm. I’m just overwhelmed. We all get overwhelmed at times and we all handle it in our very own ways. Sadly, my ways have not always been the best.

Over the years I have gotten better at realizing that my weights are my weights and no one else is to blame. I have learned over the years my parents have their own as does my brother, my sister, my friends, my coworkers and quite frankly my students too. Life can happen in some unfair ways but it is still always up to us to work through those hard times and to not place blame on anyone around us. The blame game doesn’t end good for anyone.

To some people, I’ve always been that girl that didn’t let my accident break me or stop me from living life. I have heard so many times, “Carrie, I don’t know how you do it”. You know guys, I don’t know how I have done it sometimes either. I just did, because it’s what had to be done. Because of that mentality and those opinions of me I’ve secretly labeled myself a warrior that is incapable of being broken by anything. That mindset has helped me battle some of my most heartbreaking times in life.

If you are reading this, I challenge you. Think of a hard time in your life. A best friend passing away, a parent, even a child, or a spouse or maybe even a pet. Maybe you went through a divorce that seemed like the end of the world or you lost a best friend over something you thought was trivial and made your heart ache. Maybe you got cheated on or lost a job. Maybe you or a loved one was diagnosed with a horrible disease or injured horribly in an accident. You probably had many, many moments in which you thought, “How am I gonna get through this?”. If you’re reading this it means you did or maybe you’re still getting through it right now. I am here to tell you, keep going. There is a light at the end of your tunnel. It won’t kill you unless you let it.

I’m here to admit to the world, sometimes I feel broken also. And it’s okay. Because we all feel a little frail and fragile at times.

Just because we feel inadequate in a single moment does not mean we are. It means we realize what standard we hold for ourselves. It means we have expectations of who we are and what we are supposed to be through our own eyes. We simply cannot meet all of our standards 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Just keep one thing in mind.

You are the only you there is. And you are doing the best you can. And no one, no one on this planet can be a better you than you can.

Getting through the struggles of life builds character and being broken makes us who we are.