Shambles

The phrase “everything happens for a reason” makes me nauseous. I have heard it so many times in the days, weeks, months, and years since my mom passed. It’s right up there with “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.” Respectfully, that is a crock of bullsh*t.

See, my mom passed away four days after my 22nd birthday. The entire situation was horrendous. She had cancer for a short time, and it robbed her of not just her body, but her mind as well. The cancer attacked her vital organs, including her brain, and she became the opposite of who she was my whole life. Through absolutely no fault of her own, we found ourselves caring for someone who was verbally and emotionally abusive.

The trauma that stems from those last six months is complicated. The time period where my mom was diagnosed, to when she lost her mind, was short. There wasn’t much time to process the fact that she was sick, and the outcomes that were possible. There wasn’t time to peacefully grieve with her, process with her, and have a sweet goodbye moment before she passed. That wasn’t our story. We didn’t have the moments or breath to process the cancer, because we were stuck in an endless loop of trying to tip-toe to keep her happy, upsetting her with something that was not logically upsetting, dealing with the consequences of the accidental misstep, and then holding our breath to try and not do something wrong again.

This is a situation where hearing, “everything happens for a reason,” makes you want to knock the daylights out of the person that said it to you. There is no reason my mom should’ve had cancer. There is no reason why she should suffer at all, much less the way that she did. There is no reason I should’ve had to watch my Dad and my brothers’ hearts break over and over. There is no reason that we should’ve had our world shattered. And there is absolutely no reason that she had to die, and leave us to try and rebuild our lives from ashes. There is not one reason a person could give me that would explain, rationalize, or justify any of that.

In ruminating on this, I have come to understand that what comforts me, doesn’t always comfort someone else. There are phrases that we tell ourselves to justify our actions, rationalize situations, and come to terms with things that just don’t make sense. In doing so, we sometimes harm others without knowing it. If we are telling someone else, “everything happens for a reason,” it may make us feel better about our lack of control in the situation, but it may crush the person you are speaking to.

Hearing the phrase, “Everything happens for a reason,” negates the validity of all the feelings you experienced and may still be experiencing. It’s a peppy little phrase that says, “Just take it in stride, everything’s going to work out, because it all happened for a reason.” It makes it sound like you should be thankful, because something good will come out of it, or you will have learned a valuable lesson. In truth, sometimes life just sucks. Sometimes things go horribly wrong, whether you do everything right or not. Sometimes the worst things happen to the best of people, or the most normal of people.

I have found, that for me, the takeaway is this—you can always learn from things that happen in your life, but the lesson wasn’t why the situation happened. Life just happened, and it sucked. Out of it sucking, you are the one who chooses how you move forward. If you truly need to rationalize things by using peppy phrases, then do it, but do not let someone else feed you phrases that help you to shove your feelings down and cover them up. What you experienced was real. What you went through was hard, and at times, unimaginable. You are a human being that deserves to claim your space, and feel what needs felt.

I know that this post went a bit dark, but sometimes that’s needed. I’m human and I experience the entire gamut of feelings. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow I’ll want to talk about how I forgot to lock up my dog when I left the house, and she ate an entire box of Ritz Crackers. That’s just it. This is life, and I’m just trying to make an honest way through it :).