_Myra_West_

, 12 min read

#1 Lesson from 2019: Things Can Always Get Worse

YouTube

Okay, so I've been shamelessly checking my subscriber count ever since I got to about 98. I've been really keeping tabs on it, waiting for it to break 100. And the other day, I saw that it did break 100 subscribers, and I'm very happy about that. It's a huge compliment to me. It's actually very meaningful, and I'm very, very grateful.

Okay, so I've been wanting to record this video for about two months because this is going to be my New Year's video. I want to record the number one lesson that I learned over 2019. It's absolutely changed everything for me, and that is that things can and will always get worse. What that means to me, at least, is that if you're having a bad time — bad day, week, month, or a couple of months — you're having a hard time, don't be ungrateful for that time, because if you're not grateful for that time, just know that it's going to get worse at some point.

Bad relationship and bad job

I thought that things were bad at the beginning of 2019. These were really hard times, and I was sulking around, ungrateful for everything that I had. And then, slowly throughout the year, I lost everything. Throughout 2019, I slowly and gradually lost things that I did not give a second thought to.

I want to give a little timeline of what happened. So, in the first couple of months of 2019, I was super unhappy about the job that I was in, and then I definitely didn't like where I was living. It was a place that I never really chose to be in and had, like, a really bad effect on me. And then I'll just touch on, very, very lightly, I was pretty unhappy in the relationship that I was in — unhappy in certain aspects. Just that. And again, just really touching on it super quickly, I was in a relationship where I constantly felt that I loved the other person way more than they loved me.

So, my life was pretty bad. To me, I thought, you know, in the beginning of 2019, I thought my life was pretty bad — that I hated where I was living, I was very unhappy in my relationship, I didn't have any friends (I touched on that in my previous video), and I was unhappy in my job. So, life was bad, right? It sucked.

Breakup and leg injury

Okay, it just got worse. I got broken up with. It felt very sudden, and I was really not expecting it. So, that happened, and I kind of was still living with the guy for a couple of months after I got broken up with. So, those months were just super rough. And during that time, I also injured my leg. It's actually a ligament — I think it's my adductor ligament or something like that. I injured that last May, and now in February of 2020, it is still injured. So, that is 11 months later.

No, not quite. It's about nine months later that it's still injured. I also quit my job, which was a good thing, but I was stuck in the situation where I didn't have a job, I was living with my now ex-boyfriend, I didn't have any money, I didn't have any friends, and on top of that, I had lost something that I never really realized was a gift in the first place.

I lost my mobility — my ability to walk, to run, to rollerblade, to hike — all of those things. I'm an extremely outdoorsy person. To experience the loss of all that just killed me. It absolutely murdered me. Like, everything got so much worse after I hurt my leg. That just sucked.

I really thought that it couldn't get worse. How could it get worse? I was super unhappy, depressed, in a horrible place emotionally and mentally, and then I got kicked out of where I was living — not by my ex. It's kind of complicated, but anyway, I don't really want to get into, like, the personal part of all of this because it's kind of a personal situation, but I ended up getting kicked out with two days' notice. Remember, at that point, I just had, like, this panic.

I'm not communicating the emotion that I was going through during all of this time. Obviously, it was complete and utter despair. So, I decided to heal from all this — that I was going to move somewhere far, far away because I'm an adventurous person, and I thought to myself, if I could go somewhere that was exciting enough and new enough, I could distract myself from all this pain. So, I kind of just, on the fly, too, decided to move to Austin, Texas, because there's going to be winter here. I'd been to Austin for a month before, and I thought I'd liked it. So, I drove all the way down to Austin, Texas. I found a place to live on Craigslist, found a lady to live with.

And I thought that was, you know, yeah, it's cheap rent, and I thought that was an okay idea. So, after my Austin, Texas, thing didn't work out, I ended up leaving Austin because I just realized it was not for me. I fell apart emotionally when I was there. I was way too alone, way too scared. I had moved away by myself before, but this was way different. Somehow, I was going through too much all at once — way too much. You shouldn't be going through, like, insane emotional changes at the same time as physical changes. Yeah, I know.

So, I ended up going back to Minnesota about four days later, and at that point, I had much less money because I didn't get my rent back. Yeah, I was almost going broke. I had

or that I believed, you know, with my leg, like that my whole life was obviously crashing down on me. I was really feeling sorry for myself at this point with all of those things happening at once. Everything was slowly just taken away from me.

To wrap up the story, I ended up living with my older sister's friend from way back. I lived with her and her husband, and they offered their home to me for one month, and now I am going on number four with them.

Car crash

But the story gets better. I was really feeling sorry for myself. I lost my only friend, who was my ex-boyfriend. I felt like I lost everything, and I was just in the absolute depths of despair. And then what happens? The one thing that I still had — my car — let's take it. I was driving downtown to meet my sister for coffee, and I got hit by a man running a red light in an intersection, and he was driving really fast. So, it felt. And he totaled my car, and he hit me on the driver's side door, so he destroyed the door, and the front window was stuck open. So then, I was stuck in the situation where I had a totaled car, and I did not have enough money to buy another car, and I didn't have enough money to fix my car. Luckily, the engine wasn't hurt, and the frame of the car wasn't hurt. It was the doors that were bashed in. So, I just have continued driving it for the last three months in the winter and not being able to use my front driver's side door or the driver's side window, and for the first three or four weeks after the crash, my driver's side window was stuck open. So, and it's winter here in Minnesota.

So that really sucked. But I'm trying to save me from this whole timeline is that I really thought things were bad at the beginning, but slowly and gradually they got worse until the crescendo of the car accident and losing my car, as well as gaining a couple more injuries on my neck. My shoulders, and my back were especially hurt and have been hurt for the last three months.

Gratefulness

All in all, 2019 was a really hard year, and I actually am truly grateful for the horrible, horrible, horrible things that happened. And I have actually left some things out. There were more bad things that happened, but I just have not touched on them. And I really feel grateful, in a way, for those things happening, because it kind of showed me all of the things that can go wrong. It showed me things in my life that I definitely took for granted. For example, just being able to get in and out of my car using the driver's side door, or just being able to use a drive-thru with my driver's side window, or even just having a car — being able to drive to wherever I wanted to go. I didn't really think about that as a huge blessing, as something that could actually be taken away.

So, I've learned to view everything in my life — my health, everything I own — I have learned to view all of those things as things that can be taken away and things that other people have lost. For example, health. I had this epiphany a couple of days ago, and I'm sure other people already know this, but I just thought of it: that, you know, everybody says,

"Be grateful for what you have, be grateful for what you have, be grateful for what you have."

I've always tried to be grateful for what I have, but when you don't have that much, it's actually hard to be grateful. So, I struggled with gratefulness a lot until all of this happened to me, and I realized, actually, I've been looking at gratefulness the wrong way. I should not only be grateful for what I have, I should also think about the things that I don't have and be grateful for the things I don't have.

So, and nobody ever told me this: to think of the things that you don't have and be grateful for that. I made a list: things that I don't have that I am now extremely grateful for, and things that I do now think of when I lost my health, when I hurt my leg, and the accident hurt my back, my shoulders, and my neck. It got me thinking about all of the other health conditions and ailments that I could have but don't — things like cancer or diabetes, or if I actually did lose an arm or a leg, if I didn't have properly functioning organs.

I know some people who are young who don't have properly functioning organs. Those things I absolutely took for granted. You don't think about this, but every single day that you live, if there's somebody that is your age, exactly, that has died at your exact age, down to the day, so you can be grateful each day that you have not died. I know that sounds so serious, but it's absolutely true. It's just kind of a dose of reality.

On that same line of thinking, it's also true for people you love. Every day that they're alive, you can be thankful that they have not died. It sounds so dramatic, but it happens. People die, and at some point, it is going to happen to you. At some point, your loved ones are going to die. So, you can thank God that it's not today. Whenever I'm having an okay day, I remind myself of all the horrible things that could go wrong, and to even take it to a more serious note, sometimes I think to myself,

"I'm grateful I haven't been murdered today,"

because, again, it sounds so dramatic, but it happens.

I was watching a documentary on Ted Bundy recently, and I realized for the first time that his victims were 18, 19, or 22 years old, and that really hit home. It's like,

"Wow, that actually happened to someone. It hypothetically could have been me."

So, suffering so much has completely changed the way that I think about things, and learning that things can always get worse. But when you think things are bad, just reminding yourself that things can get so much worse.

There are so many things you have that you can lose. There are a couple of things that I still have in my life—well, there's many things in my life that I still have that I can lose. So, it's that way of looking at it: Think of what in your life can you lose, and then be grateful for those things, and think outside of the box. I didn't realize how lucky I was to have such good health until after I lost it, and now every day I make sure to be grateful for everything I do have. I haven't completely lost my health. I'm not bedridden. I can still walk. I still have a good right leg. I still have a good stomach area. I have great internal functioning. There's so many parts of my body that are still working. There are so many things I still have that I can be grateful for.

Cell phone

Okay, I'm going to quickly list off a couple of things that I've been really grateful for lately — things that I've really been trying to think of. Another thing that I realized I could lose at any time is my cell phone. I really cherish and value my cell phone. I have thousands of pictures and videos on my phone and thousands of text messages that I really value. I'm extremely grateful for the ability to take pictures and videos. Two or three hundred years ago, pictures didn't exist, and that's incredible. I'm super grateful for the ability to communicate through cell phones to people who are distant, which leads me to: I'm so grateful for the ability to drive places and cars. Like, it's incredible the kinds of things that we have nowadays that nobody thinks about.

I'm also grateful for the internet every day. That's a new thing that we have that other people did not have. Grateful for the necessities that I have every day, like food and water, a place to sleep, access to warmth, especially in the winter, and a bed. I've gone through lots of times in my life where I don't have a bed — slept on the floor, or slept on the couch, or slept in my car.

So, I touched on just a few things. It's been life-altering to think about all the things that I have that I could lose, people that I could lose, and more of my health that I could lose, my senses. There is so much that we have that we can lose, and there's so many things that can happen to us tomorrow that will ruin our lives. It has made me desperate to be grateful every day for everything that I have.

If you made it through, I really loved the sense of community from my other videos, and I'm hoping I can keep that going, and I don't want it to be, like, too corny, but I really want to give another word because it was so much fun last time. I really loved reading the comments. I would scroll through and smile as I read those.

And some people would just comment "pizza," and that was it — nothing else — and that just made me super happy. So, if you made it through the video, I would love it if you could comment my favorite animal, which is a unicorn. So, if you made it through, comment "unicorn."