Bend So You Don't Break

Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post called Living Another Normal.  It was regarding my experience of life after having my large intestine removed and having an ileostomy bag "in its place."  With that I was forced to learn how to bend my mind enough that I could learn to live with something few people, especially as 20 year olds, have to live with.  I had to learn a new routine of changing out the ostomy bag every few days, and if it required changing not long after it had been changed (in other words, I sprung a leak), then I had to learn to adapt quickly and get it changed again.  If it did this repeatedly, I had to learn what I was doing wrong to keep this from happening as it's not good for your skin.

The thing with this experience is that it's not just relevant to ostomy bags or to medical issues of any kind.  Living Another Normal, that's almost a daily thing.  When a couple gets married, they have to learn to live with another human being that is a complete opposite of them.  One spouse likes to sleep with background noise, the other wants complete silence (but still gets background noise as the other spouse snores), one wants extra blankets on the bed because they must be cold blooded, the other barely wants sheets on the bed, one wants sports on 24/7, the other loves Food Network (we all know I win that debate).  We learn to live with the differences of that other person.  (We just may not like it.)  We bend a little or we would just break.

When children enter the world, whole lives are changed (that's an understatement) including those of the grandparents, aunts, uncles, whoever is close with the parents basically.  There are frequent diaper purchases and stinky diaper changes and trying to figure out which diaper works best and doesn't cause your child to break out in an awful rash, doctor's visits because it seems like the child always has something going on and there is an overabundance of online articles that shakes first time parents to their core, overtaking the living room with toys that get picked up before bedtime but you wouldn't know it by the next morning, buying the next size up in clothes what seems like every few months as these kids literally grow overnight...we could go on and on.  We learn to except that kids are expensive and messy and that's our new normal.   We bend a little more because the stress of raising kids would surely make us break.

And of course there are life events that aren't really major but can provide a thorn that pokes a person at the worst times.  For example, a couple of weeks ago, we lost our mailbox after someone hit it.  The individual was okay, thank goodness.  And they took care of the cost of replacing the mailbox.  But until we could get that done we had to deal with getting our mail sent elsewhere.  (Like I said, not a big deal, just an aggravation.)  Another issue we had around that time was with our car.  My husband drops off our son at his babysitter's house and the car failed to start up when he went to leave.  Unsure of the cause of this issue, he called a tow truck, and the gentleman jump-started the battery where my husband could then start the car and take it to the mechanics.  That's where I come in.  I came to pick him up there and take him on to work.  He's a teacher so he had to be in contact with school so they could cover his classroom until he got there.  The school had to bend as the issue was out of anyone's control and my husband's classroom needed supervision in his absence.  My husband had to bend as his normal morning routine suddenly came to a halt due to what we learned was a dead car battery.  And I had to bend as I also was going to be late to work.  But that's life and if any of us had been staunch against giving a little, life would have been even harder.  We had to learn a new normal for just a temporary time.

Life happens.  We've all heard that and we've all experienced that.  And it's true.  If you're living, life is happening, sometimes to us and sometimes through us.  We choose how we react to it.  If I had been anti-ostomy, well I'd probably still be a very sick individual.  I wouldn't be able to live like I do now.  I'd still be on awful medication.  But I decided to bend (more than just a little).  I chose to take an option less favored by most.  And that allowed me a new normal, a new life, and kept me from breaking.