Different Way to Stand

“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand.”
–Oprah Winfrey

I love this quote from Oprah! It has recently helped me get out of the funk that set in about the time I was involved in a car accident in late September. That accident changed my life, but not in the way you'd typically think. There were no wheelchairs or hospital stays involved. I did have to go to physical therapy, but physically I'm exactly where I was before the accident happened.

When I was a little girl I dreamed about going to college. While my classmates were thinking about what to wear to school the next day (this was pre-boring uniforms), I was planning out every aspect of my college career - where to go, what to study, etc. I understood from an early age that no matter what happened to me, I would better myself and get out of the situation I was growing up in. My college dreams stayed with me through the years, though specific plans changed repeatedly as I began to discover myself. There was an on-and-off period when I thought about trade school vs. college, but I always came back to the college plans.

After that car accident, I had to withdraw from school for the semester. I can't even tell you how depressing it was to lose everything I'd ever wanted in an instant and have to watch as everyone else continued. Along with withdrawing came the loss of financial aid, and that created a financial black hole big enough to swallow me whole. I later found out I couldn't even go back to school in January.

Somewhere during the process of losing everything that had consumed my life, my brain got its wires crossed. I felt like a complete failure, and I was so afraid of failing again that I almost gave up on my dream of becoming a journalist and on everything else. I was crying all the time and being extremely pathetic in general. It finally got to the point where I hit rock bottom.

The next thing I knew Oprah was on television saying something very encouraging (not the quote I have at the beginning, but one similar). I realized then that I had never failed at all. I had been thrown a curve ball in life, and instead of swinging my bat differently, I just stood there cowering at home plate. I had a choice to make: I could cower for the rest of my life and truly be a failure, or I could fight like hell all the way back to success.

I have chosen to fight, and that's where I'm at in life right now. I'm in the middle of this gigantic struggle to get back in school and start making the first of many dreams come true. Like I said, this really is a struggle, so if you talk to me and I'm a little pathetic, you'll have to take that into consideration and forgive me.

I wanted to write this to catch my followers up on all the little details. For a long time, I didn't want to blog because I thought the world would see me as the failure I thought I was, but those days are over and gone. Start looking for my blog again!