On being human
We love a life on fire.
We love love, love success stories, love happily ever after. Ask me and I’d say we’re a society bent towards a happy ending.
I read a quote this morning on a grief page I follow talking about this very thing, that we celebrate love but grief is a byproduct of that love and we as a society have low tolerance for grief.
I thought about that, bundled up in front of my heater in the frigid December cold, not in the context of love lost but of a life. My life.
I’m the first person to tell you I love my life. Love it. I love being alive, in all its forms. I love morning coffee and sunrises, love Christmas lights and celebrations, I’m all about romanticizing holidays or going out or a random Tuesday trip to McDonalds.
I can tell you the story in my sleep: how I almost died, how an organ donor saved my life, how post transplant I’ve been handed this new realm of life that wasn’t accessible to me before. And it’s a really good story, trust me, I know.
This is the highlight reel, the stuff that makes it to the instagram, the thing that has created the foundation for my success in the world as a certified boss babe, with articles in national literary journals and speaking on stages across North America. The enthusiasm for life is contagious, and if I do say so myself I make a really good success story. Marketable.
With equal passion as I have for living life to the fullest, I’ve also been told I am fiercely honest about the “dark side” Which means I talk loudly, and frequently, about existing in a world that thrives on ableism, sexism, capitalism… and what it means to be someone who doesn’t fit in stereotypical binaries. I talk about death, a lot, and loss and grief and ways to keep living when everything is falling apart. I’m more than happy to swap trauma over breakfast, and to share the realities of living in a chronically ill body.
On the other side of this joy is pain, the kind I live with inside my body every single day of my life. And while I look at this as different sides of this multifaceted life, I’ve also been told to just focus on the positives please. Tell a good story, inspire us, be a shining example of success, but don’t actually touch on anything real.
I thought as I was thinking about this quote that both are parts of life, and I experience one because I experience the other. One does not cancel the other out. And this minimization of life and what it means to be human isn’t doing anyone any favours. I feel everything so deeply, from things I want to experience to things I don’t. There is no selectivity in which emotions get turned up and which ones are dimmed. When we are asked to meet life, we’re asked to meet all of it.
So when I say I love life, I don’t just mean the sparkly, happy moments. No great success comes without cost. No real happiness comes without pain. And by only focusing on one and not the other, we’re limiting the true spectrum of what life could be.
Brutal, Beautiful, Awful, Amazing, Heartbreaking, Hopeful, Wild, Intense, Magical…
Mine.
As this year is coming to a close, and I reflect on what I hope I’ve been able to share with people this year, it’s the honest, inspiring, heartbreaking ride of the human experience. Being alive is all of it. Every part of it has a place here.
For me, and for you.
Life isn’t a highlight reel. But I promise if you let it, it can be beautiful.