Living through another

Everyone has a story, and in every story we are the main character to what life teaches YOU. When I think about this thing called life it can be pretty bizarre as each one is so different.

As a young bartender and waitress of over ten years, the hustle and grind was my life. It was fun, but that lifestyle will eventually consume you with not just the partying that comes with it, but the rationalization of -this is it. This is all there is. There has to be more. This can’t be it.

Living downtown in St.Petersburg, Florida my character would be defined as an urban living single female making it out on her own. I was content but empty at the very same time. I think everyone comes to this point in life but it’s not the turning point. The turning point is something that transforms us from youth to woman. It’s something that becomes a wake up call. Everyone has one, and everyone’s is different.

For me, it was soul searching for inner peace. Finding it in money, people, love, prosperity,or spiritual guidance. I looked everywhere but still could not reach it. Something was buried deep down and I didn’t know what it was.

I got into trouble time and time again because living a life on the town at nightly hours, trouble just kinda finds it’s way to you. In and out of jail, and telling myself okay, I got it under control this time. Drinking, mostly was what got me in trouble. Dating people that were invigorating but always temporary. My life was a cycle. It was good and felt healthy, controlled but then always circled back to the chaos. I was a good kid, what was so out of control? Whatever it was, I’d tackle it. I was never an addict but I was walking the fine line.

In 2013, a very close friend of mine was in a traumatic motorcycle accident. She was riding on the back of the bike with her boyfriend driving and they were blindsided by another vehicle.

In seconds my friends life was at it’s end.

When I got the phone call something turned inside of me. A fear. A fear I’d never felt before, not only for her life, but for my own. Life was real, and death was imminent. Why was this thought so provoking? Why now? I’ve been in close call death situations before and never once was confronted or phased by the actual thought of my life ending. Until, Cassy.

As she fought for her life every single second she was in a coma for two months, that fear never left me. That thought of, death.

In New York, I was almost hit by a taxi cab flying full speed in my direction and I was pulled back by Cassy in seconds. I was not paying attention- I just laughed it off.

In a night club in Miami, I partied a little too hard and entrusted some strangers.

On my 24th birthday I drank too much and almost overdosed on drugs.

On a boat with drunken college kids, I almost overdosed again while the drivers were intoxicated.

As a passenger in a severe DUI accident, I flew cracking the windshield with my face.

And on another occasion, I was roofied and should have been in a ditch somewhere but woke up in a house with people who took care of me instead.

I’ve been taken advantage of by inebriated consent and have woken up in strange places, all due to my actions, and somehow I was still granted freedom and oxygen in my lungs.

Why now is this thought of death waking me up this time. Why did I get it, THIS time.

When you watch someone other than yourself fight for their life you kinda just sit back and take watch. And while watching, you’re pondering why is this not me and happening to her?

All the while that little voice said to me, this is you.

This was almost you on numerous countless nights but you were too complacent you wouldn’t have even noticed.

As a young writer, I wrote Cassy for every single day that she didn’t wake up. For each day she missed a total of two months. I wrote her what the weather was like and the holidays she missed. One being her surprise 30th birthday party that she missed that very same weekend of the accident. She completely missed her 30th birthday. Even to this day, she never had a 30th birthday or any reconciliation of it. Just completely skipped over it.

How in the world can life do that? Skip days, but still be alive.

Wow, that thought resonated with me. I felt like I was skipping days in my life and not even comprehending it. So many wasteful moments of time.

This was my coming of age. This was the moment, as I wrote this book to her, that I was reviving my own life. The thought of my breath actually leaving my body and my soul moving out. To the afterlife. In which I always believed in, but never grabbed hold of the horns to that bull. Never did I really imagine it happening to me.

Here’s the thing about death, we want to imagine it as a plan to take place eventually at the end of our life. Every human knows they will die one day, but we like to think of it as a later plan, like after retirement or something. Like, I’ll check out in my old age when I’m done living. But that is not the truth to be held. The truth is, those who think life will end later may happen even sooner.

People die every day at all ages. What a thought. A thought that made me get up. A thought that brought me back to church, and a thought that made me leave the streets behind and get a career. A thought that I have to spend my time helping others see this thought for themselves. Investing and help awaken this thought in the the lives of everyone I meet. Every person I come in contact with is not accidental.

My life was radically changed. I stopped partying and dabbling in social drugs. I was gifted a new career, and I fell inlove with my Creator who gives me life and can take it way.

I gave authority back and ownership to what I thought I had, but I do not. I am so far from being in control of my destiny.

The only thing I can do is make it count, and that is literally the only thing I can do. I can have purpose and gratitude and stop wasting it away on temporary highs.

Cassy made it out and seven years later I was able to give her the book as it took seven years for her to stabilize and re-learn how to read. Cassy’s life was drastically changed and I changed with her.

She now birthed a beautiful baby girl and has read every page of my book.

In that book I told her how I surrendered my life. How I picked up my feet and chose to live.

Her story saved my life and lead me to the place I was supposed to be this whole entire time. Colors are brighter now. Trees and flowers are moments, not things. Animals are gifts and people are stories.

Life, is a lesson with purpose if unveiled. And God, is real.

Cassy, you are an angel in disguise.