Mantras I Say to Survive
We’d do anything to get through life. We rationalize, we chalk up events to fate, we drink (or is that just me?).
One thing I didn’t have was a mantra to live my life by.
That is, until I got divorced.
I don’t think this will come as a surprise, but divorce is hard, especially when you are not the one who wanted to get divorced.
Author’s Note: Turns out, divorce was the best thing to ever happen in my marriage.
But at the time, it was a major shift in my life.
One minute you are going in one direction, and then suddenly, whiplash.
Everything fell apart. With that, I needed a way to cope.
We went to marriage counseling together, but that really didn’t work out for her.
So I went to marriage counseling alone, and that worked out for me (sort of).
This marriage counselor gave me tools to deal with those intrusive thoughts that filled my brain twenty-four hours a day. Not even time off when I was asleep (as if I slept).
One of those tools was to wear a rubber band around my wrist. Whenever one of those negative thoughts showed up, I’d snap the band against my skin.
I guess it’s like spraying an animal with water when it acts poorly.
I still have the scar on my wrist.
So, no, that didn’t work.
Another tool left no scars but led me to my first mantra.
The doctor told me to pick a time of day. Same time every day (mine was 5 p.m.). Whenever one of those intrusive thoughts tried to park in my brain, I would tell myself, “Think about it at 5 o’clock.”
However, here’s the trick: if I missed 5 o’clock, I had to wait until that time the next day.
Eventually, there came a time when I pushed those thoughts from my head, and they stayed pushed.
That taught me one thing. No matter how bad things get, with this divorce (or in life):
This too shall pass.
Divorce was tough, but there are other events in life that aren’t as dramatic but need to be dealt with just the same.
When I was separated, I needed a place to live, someplace close enough to the kids so I wasn’t spending half my life in the car picking them up and dropping them off.
Fortunately, I found a townhouse that had just gone on the market (that very day, in fact), so I had my place.
When I moved in, the house needed work. I painted every room, each a different color. In hindsight, it looked very ‘70s (it was 1999). I had the carpeting replaced in every room. Unfortunately, I ignored a friend’s advice about not getting a navy blue carpet. It really does show off every speck of dirt.
Then there was my kitchen (talk about the ‘70s).
It had a drop-down ceiling. Every time I switched the lights on, the neon would flicker for a few seconds before they burst to life.
It was like walking into a morgue every single day.
It was very unlike me, but within two days, that drop-down ceiling was gone.
Then, very much just like me, I stopped.
That’s how my ceiling looked for the next twenty-six years: an unfinished ceiling with no light.
I told you I don’t like change.
But eventually, even for me, something had to.
In August of last year, I talked to a friend who was retired. For Thom, throughout his entire career, he worked in construction (built houses). So we spoke about what changes I wanted to make to my house.
In the beginning, all I really wanted were lights in my kitchen. But as I saw the changes he was making, I could see well beyond those lights.
In fact, it turned out that we (he) were going to change, well, everything.
It wouldn’t be overnight. In fact, it would take several months (on and off), from last year to just a week ago.
I watched as pieces of my house were torn out, thrown away, and replaced.
Everything from entire floors to light fixtures and outlets was new. When one room changed, Thom just moved on to the next.
I was overwhelmed by the scope of the renovation, but amazed at how Thom worked. Focused on the task at hand, and not worried about what he needed to do a day, a week, or a month from now.
He built the steps of the ladder, then used the ladder to complete the next part of the plan.
It made me think.
With my divorce, or any uncomfortable events in life, “This too shall pass” means it will eventually get better, something to put behind me.
But this project, this renovation, was not a bad thing. It was something to get through, with a positive outcome in the end.
In the beginning, I was overwhelmed by this project. So much change. Every space in my house was going to be different.
But instead of looking toward the end of the project, I started to look at the steps that would get us there.
And now that it’s over, and every room of my house has been upgraded, it made me think. A saying I had heard before, a mantra to get me through life when faced with an overwhelming task:
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.
I can manage my life instead of letting life manage me.
Now, if I can only find a theme song.
