In the end

Now that the semester is almost over, I can’t help but look back and feel like I’ve moved a mountain.

I got laid off. I knew it was coming, but it’s still a shock.

I thought I was going to fail my classes. All of them, but I managed to knock out all the work I needed to do.

If there is one piece of advice I can give to any mother out there, or even just any person, it is to be brave. Be resilient. Be so confident that you are man enough to ask for help.

That’s what I learned to do this year. Ask for help. People want to give it to you, but they can’t if you don’t tell them you need it.

After losing my job, I didn’t think I had lost it. I focused on my son and the extra time I get to spend with him. But, as these things usually do, I really did become aware that I was losing it. That everything I’ve worked my ass off for the last 4 years was somehow not going to happen because I couldn’t get my head above the water I had willingly waded into.

But I realize that all of these things, as large as they seem, are so much smaller when broken into their smaller parts. School can come together if I buckle down and do the work. And do the work I have been. Catching up to writing the equivalent of a thesis is quite an arduous task.

My therapist told me that I take responsibility for things that are not my responsibility. I don’t recall truer words ever being spoken to me.

So, in the spirit of looping back around, I should only feel right getting to the good part of where this semester has taken me. I am signed up to graduate in December, just shy of my 32^nd birthday and I have worked out a part-time job that will keep me afloat until then.

I will no longer focus on things that are not in my control, rather, make the best of what I have in front of me. The things that matter. My education. My child. My health.

I will run more. I will speak Spanish even when I don’t have to. I will build my photography business and use my remaining time at UT to get better at the thing I love so very much. I will BE.

I will help people. I will find the way I can make a difference in this world with the gifts I was given upon arrival on Earth.

I will travel more. I will worry less. I will work to become fluent in my third language. I will do all the things that make me better. Because better is always greater than broken. And broken can always be fixed, so remember that next time you fall off of the wall and don’t have any glue.