Meaty memories
Hahahaha that might be a strange way to let you know that she has a catering business, and their primary focus is high quality and delicious smoked meats, but I’m trying to have a little fun here, lol.
This ties in to how incredible my friend is, because she and her husband have been able to cultivate a brand for themselves, get a mobile catering trailer to do bigger and bigger events, and also a regular meal program for rural seniors, who may have become very isolated and have certain food insecurities during the recent pandemic. The friend of mine has been able to network and contribute to our community in such a meaningful way since she moved here, and I don’t think it’s even been quite 10 years yet.
The reason I want to talk about this wonderful, beautiful, kind friend of mine- and trust me, there is so much more to say- but we had an experience last night driving home from a catering event that was just about as divine or kismet as it gets.
What should I talk about first, the reason it was so impactful or the event itself…
Ok let’s start with the reason. We had finished up catering and clean up, and we were on the highway heading back home, the drive would be about an hour and a half. Like we always do, the long drive got us talking big deep life questions and updates on family and how things are going- but on a deeper level. I LOVE that about long drives.
We got talking about how sometimes in life we have seen people; a family member, a friend, or even been stuck there ourselves- who just seem to be hiding. Hiding the sparkle that you know deep down is inside them. I definitely struggled with this a lot in my life, and had a bit of an epiphany about it back in about 2020 when the wife of a friend of mine from high school sadly passed away, losing a battle with cancer. She was a mother to three beautiful children, had a huge community of friends and family who adored her, she was younger then me, and in many ways much healthier then me. She had her whole beautiful life in front of her and it was snatched away. So how dare I, in my depression and fear, waste what life I was given, if I’m not going to at least live my life fully. When I started to see things in my life play out and result only in me just enduring a life I actually hated and was killing me. I started to feel the numbness. I started to notice how much the numbness had set in. I wasn’t happy in absolutely any aspect of my life.
I didn’t like how I looked, I didn’t like my job, I didn’t like my dysfunctional relationships, I didn’t like that we were having money troubles, I didn’t like literally anything about my own life. I was drinking a lot, and turning to a lot of distractions to just cope through the day.
After I started to realize I had gone this far down a path of disassociation and avoiding- it became crystal clear to me that this was my life, and it was all my fault.
And when I say all my fault, no I don’t mean I’m the one that personally charged up the credit card on useless purchases on Amazon- no it wasn’t like that. But I am the one that said “okay well I guess we are using the credit card to pay for that, sigh, oh well, I guess we will just try and pay it off later on some how…” like Eeyore. I had become flippen Eeyore. I was complicit in my own destruction and I was just letting it all pile up on me, in literally every aspect of my life. And I had no idea how to stop. So I started small.
I got my hair done.
My friend, the one I mentioned before, she always looks amazing. She knows what she wants for her haircut/style and will literally go back again and again if it’s not quite hitting all the checky boxes. I so admire that about her, because I have always just accepted whatever my hair looks like, even if maybe it didn’t look that great actually. So with her as my inspiration I got my hair done really nice, it was pretty expensive but I had saved up just for this and I literally felt like a million bucks.
This is the truth. Life is TOO SHORT to spend any more time NOT FEELING like a million bucks.
And only you can do that, for yourself.
If you wait for your spouse to notice that you are feeling blue, they won’t. And they won’t be able to do the work inside your heart that will start flipping those switches for you. You have to do it, and you have to see that it’s worth it for you to do it. None of us know how long we have on this planet, so just don’t wait, don’t waste any more precious time not feeling awesome.
Which is the point I had literally just finished expressing as we were coming up the hill and noticed a bit of a commotion.
We were the first car to come upon an accident (from our direction, there were other cars there already.) As we pulled to a stop I was paying attention to the headlight up ahead because there was clearly wildlife, found out moments later it was a whole herd of deer, crossing the highway and their legs were crossing in front of the headlight. I said oh there’s something on the road up ahead that must be why everyone is stopped. My friend pointed out my window and said, yeah I bet they are what caused that.
Beside me, was a big suburban type vehicle, still running, absolutely smashed right up, airbags deployed, glass everywhere with the wheels in the air.
How did I not even see it. How did it even happen?
A gentleman came over and we learned that the woman driving was okay and she was on the other side of the road, 911 had been called. She was okay and had crawled out of the window. The man that came and spoke to us was car number two, and he was clearly also in shock. He said something like, I was behind her, I saw her hit the breaks, I saw the herd of deer, then al of a sudden her headlights were pointed at me and then she was gone again. He told us this all happened like, 50 seconds ago. You could feel a strange energy in the air. It was so surreal. I did my best to help direct and slow down traffic. My friend gave a blanket to the woman who was also clearly in shock. And we stayed until emergency vehicles arrived.
We got back in our car, took one last slow look at the broken glass and carnage that was all over the road, remarked about how she’s so lucky she ended up on this side of the highway and not down the ravine on the other side. And we drove on.
And that’s when it hit me, like what was I just saying- life is too short! None of us know how long we have left! If we had been 50 seconds sooner coming up that hill, the herd of deer would have been dancing us across the highway and down the ravine instead. 50 seconds. That’s it.
I’m so thankful for my friend. Some people would have just kept driving. Some did. One truck acted like they were not going to slow down at all and had me diving for the ditch actually. But my friend is always willing to help out so much. She is always willing to do the right thing. Even give away her favorite fuzzy blanket to a stranger on the side of the road.
So in conclusion, this post’s purpose is to do two things. Encourage you to get out of your hiding spot, live your life as fully as you can, it’s the only chance you got. And secondly, store up as many awesome memories as possible with those brilliant, wonderful people in your life- it’s really just a matter of luck that we have them for as long as we do.
If you made it this far, thanks as always for reading,
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