The Bucket List

February 11th of this year, I was hit at an intersection and my car was totaled. While I am grateful that my car sustained the brunt of the damage, I was heartbroken because I was due to pay it off in September of this year. I usually bounce back from setbacks quickly, but I noticed months later that I was still in a slump. My typical bubbly and outgoing personality slowly beginning to fade.

I sustained a minor back injury that I did not equate to my car accident initially.  A month prior to my accident I started going to the gym and just figured my back pain was due to missing workouts after the accident. I started to allow my mental anguish to overshadow the physical pain that I was experiencing in my back. A month after the accident, I was still in physical pain that was getting worse by the day. I decided to go to my chiropractor and found out that I had sustained injuries from the car accident. Finding out the reason for my physical pain began to help with my mental state because I had something to correlate to what I was experiencing both physically and mentally. While this new knowledge relieved some of my mental anguish and the physical pain, I thought it would significantly improve my mental state, but it did not!

I couldn't understand what was going on with me mentally. I just knew that I wasn't the same and I had to figure out what was going on! It’s now May, 3 months post-accident and 2 months into my chiropractic care. My back pain has improved tremendously but my mental state is still in shambles. I began to get frustrated because of all the things I have overcome in my life; this one has taken longer to recover from than I anticipated.

I can't remember how it came to me, but "something" told me to look up the definition of a midlife crisis. It was as if someone whispered the phrase in my ear. I am and always have been aware of the phrase, but never related it to myself until I started researching the meaning, causes, symptoms, and coping mechanism. I typically deal with things internally, on my own, by compartmentalizing what I am dealing with. Please understand that I did not seek professional help nor am I against seeking professional help, but I do believe that I was “guided” to the information that I needed to understand and cope with what I had been experiencing.

I am 45 years old, and I am beginning to experience and see my life differently than I did when I was in my 30s, 20s, teens, and earlier years of my life. I am now realizing that each decade of my life brought on stages of failures, growth, learning lessons, and ultimately aging.

The car accident was more traumatic for me than I had realized. It triggered something in me that I had not even began to comprehend until I stopped and acknowledged that I needed to address the thoughts that were living rent free in my mind opposed to trying to suppress and move past them because “getting older is a natural part of life” (that’s what I had been telling myself). The car accident brought a reality of life closer than I cared to have to deal with.

For much of my adult life, I looked at life as a mission for the soul and that we are here to simply live, fulfill a purpose, and then die! I have always prepped my daughters on the things I feel that they would need to know in the event of my death. As I continue to live, which in turn means that I am getting closer to my expiration date, I feel like I need to experience my life more and not just live it to fulfill a purpose and then die.

I have been writing this blog longer than I care to admit and was supposed to post it last week (my next blog topic will be about my relationship with procrastination 😊) because I did state in my last blog that I would be posting weekly going forward...but that is a topic for another day...aaand I continue to digress…☹

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Okay, getting back to the topic at hand…I knew what I wanted this blog to be about when I started writing it. What I did not expect was to experience so many loses of life as I was writing this blog, which brings my wants for how I plan to live the remainder of my life closer to reality. So many people that I knew have passed away in the last 2 weeks I feel like I need to do something to ensure that I am making the best of my life and not allowing my life to make the best of me!

I’ve never thought of creating a Bucket List before, but I am seriously contemplating it now. I think I am going to do it and if I do, my overthinking mind will do its thing and create something else for me to ponder on.

What do you think about life? Have you thought about creating a Bucket List?