During the last month of my mother's life, she resigned herself to dying. Mom had seen my misery and rage and she knew how unhappy I had been. She told me that she wanted me to be happy. She didn't want the last part of my life to be as full of despair as my childhood had been. I had to learn to accept things that probably would not change. Since life would probably never be how I wanted it to be, I needed to deal with life as it is. This seemed to be easier said than done, but when I accepted things that I could not change, some of the hardness in my psyche seemed to soften a bit. I learned not to take everything so personally.
Every morning, I make the choice to be happy and grateful for all the great things in my life. I have many wonderful aspects to my life: a loving husband, a nice house, a good job, loving friends and family, and reasonably good health. I notice that people react to me differently now than when I was younger. They don't seem to be as threatening or ominous as before. Sometimes I can even see their "side of the story" and empathize with them: maybe they were just having a bad day and didn't mean to snap at me. I also feel much less guilty about keeping toxic people at an arm's length, or even writing them off completely.
The older I get, the more I realize that although many people seem to love reliving their youth, I would not be young again for all the money in the world. My time is now.
