What Was And What Is (and the huge difference)

Much easier said than done. I should know. My 19th year in this world was full of "should haves." I should have been able to stay in college and not miss a year. I should have been able to stay at work and build my money. I should have been well enough to drive myself around instead of being driven to places like a 12 year old. I should have been able to go to parties and stay up late. I should have loved that summer as much as I loved the last.

And every moment, of nearly every day, what should have been was all I could think about. Even now I catch myself in the act. Just the other day I couldn't help thinking, "I should have graduated a year ago, not this year. I should already be done with my year at a university by now."

But then, life is full of should haves. And I have come to know that dwelling on the should haves never got me very far. Maybe some of those things were not meant to be. We can never really know what could have been, we can only know what is.

I look back on my should haves as if they were the perfect life that was denied to me. But nobody lives a perfect life. There would have been pain and trial in my should have life as well. I would have met up with trouble. I would have met up with tears. Only I would not have gotten to look at it as I do now, through the lens of what actually did happen.

I got cancer. It broke me. But it broke me so that I could rebuild myself into something much more. I no longer need to remember the should haves, the could have beens. No, I don't need them. I don't need them because I have something better: the what is.

And in this real and true life of mine I defeated cancer, I graduated from my community college and I did it all in the shadow of death. I could not have written a more heroic story for myself if I had tried. What I am is so much better than what I could have been. Who I am is so much better. 

Never forget to remember what is and not what should have been.

-Rachael