Street Art by Banksy
Today is all you have.
It's taken me a few days to write this all down, mainly for the fact that it's kind of a lot to swallow. The moment after I got news of what happened, my mood had slumped, I got into my car, and I went for a ride. The friday night hat turned slightly depressing, yet taught me a shocking, unpredicted lesson I would have never learned otherwise.
I came home from work Friday afternoon, utterly exhausted, as I haven't been sleeping for weeks. (My average nights sleep was one to three hours, and on a good night, four hours. My body and mind were a wreck, and I felt it. I just chose to ignore it. As per usual.) I fell asleep mid sentence while talking to one of my friends on my laptop. The day before, I fell asleep, mid sentence, in a room full of executives at work. I woke up as my mother was walking in the door. Dying of thirst, I made my way down the stairs as she was walking towards the steps. My mother is not the emotional type. In fact, she can brush off any given situation. A tragic occurrence is taken at the same speed as driving past possum roadkill on I-195. She looked up at me walking down the stairs. I saw the look her face and was instantly, without even thinking, taken back and worried, never a feeling I got around my mother.
"You'll never guess what happened." If I spoke out loud of the things that rushed through my brain, I would sound like a lunatic, but with valid reason. "My friend Theresa, I was sitting with her yesterday at the restaurant, she was totally fine...", my mother had a way of trailing off with her sentences. She can speak one full sentence, but you'll get three different stories from it, all in one shot, something I learned to master understanding since childhood.
"...she was found stabbed to death in her bed this morning. Her ten year old daughter found her. Nobody knows who did it or why, they think it was her son who's a junior in high school. But she's dead. I was just sitting with her yesterday."
I usually laugh to myself when I consciously listen to my mother speak. It's like a game, you kind of have to keep up with what she's saying. But for the first time, she was worried, scared, confused and filled with emotion. This was something I wasn't used to. This was the first time I hadn't inwardly laughed at our conversation.
I asked a few questions, and then suddenly got the urge to be alone. I grabbed my car keys and did so. Never in my life have I turned off my music while I was driving, and I hadn't even realized that I had, until I found myself two towns over, not even knowing what my destination was, driving in complete silence. I could have sworn I had a destination.
A rush of thoughts entered my mind, as if I were an award winning poet with all the most novel things to say, just not out loud, or on paper. I realized suddenly that today is all I had. I may be perfectly healthy today, enjoying my life and everything in it, looking forward to what was to happen tomorrow night, but I might never make it there. I realized that it doesn't really matter your situation. God has a plan for you and that's that. Fight it all you want, but a bigger, better being is out there, with your life in a book of people maps, and you can't do a thing about it. Your life is mapped out. You're just along for the ride. I just so happen to make lots of fun pit stops along the way of my mapped out life.
As scary as it is to think that tomorrow morning, you can wake up and be nonexistent, it's a little bit motivating. I think the greatest thing you can do in life, is to live it. If I go one single day without doing something I love, something that makes me who I am, I fall into a slump. Instantly. Whether it's paint a single painting, or a dozen, reflect on what color I feel like for the day, write in my creative journal, think up a new idea, spend time with the people that inspire me most, read my favorite book of the moment, find my new favorite Salvation Army find for $2. I've learned to live simply, and coming from a town where BMW's, Louis Vuitton's, $300 jeans and frequent visits to the Chanel boutique on the weekends with your besties was the norm, I've surely been humbled. It's pretty amazing to look at what mattered most then, as opposed to what matters most now. They say who you are at twenty five is who you are, solid. I hope I'm this way for forever. Because I've never, ever been happier, more content, than I am right now.
Remember the moments where you think to yourself, "This is what it is to be happy". Humble yourself and realize the things that matter in your life, even if it takes a little reevaluation, because in the state our world is in, we all need it. Find a little piece of happiness in something other than something you can purchase at a store, like a little time spent with the person that means the most to you. There's so much to life, if we just stop following everyone else's tail. You're the only person that's ever going to walk this earth. There will never be another Ali Pinho, so I want to make a name that stands for what it is. You will never be repeated. You can never be remade, no matter how advanced science gets. Do what makes you who you are. Be who you are, today. Because you will never get today back, and tomorrow is never guaranteed. And I think from Theresa's story, we should all take that into account and realize how important it is to live. Every. Single. Day.
Just live. Because today is all you have.
