_Myra_West_

, 12 min read

#1 Lesson from 2019: Things Can Always Get Worse

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 very very grateful okay so I've been wanting to record this video for about two months because this is gonna be my New Year's video I want to record the number one lesson that I learned over 20 19 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 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 gonna get worse at some point - I thought that things were bad at the beginning of 2019 these are really hard and I was sulking around ungrateful for everything that I had and that 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 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 had like a really bad effect on me and then I'll just touch on I very very lightly I was pretty unhappy in the relationship that I was in unhappy in certain aspects just that um and again to really touchin 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 my previous video and I was unhappy in my job so life was bad right is sucked okay it just got worse I got broken up with 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 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 entered that last May and now in April earth sorry now in February

of 2020 it is still injured so that is 11 months later no not quite huh 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 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 mentally and then I got kicked out of where I was living I'm not by my ex it's kind of complicated but anyway I 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 gonna 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 a 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 is 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 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 nowhere to live in the city I had no job obviously no friends and I was recently broken up with and I had lost my health 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 very going on month number four with them 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 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 and the front window was stuck open so then I was stuck in the situation where I had a totaled car and I was 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 are 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 and my shoulders and my back were especially hurt and have been hurt for the last three months 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 happen but I just have not touched on 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 just getting 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 like this epiphany a couple 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-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 so serious sounding 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 OK day I remind myself of all 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 10 or 22 years old and that really hit home he'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 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 it okay I'm gonna quickly list off a couple 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 anytime is my cell phone the really cherish and value of my cell phone have thousands of pictures and videos on my phone and thousands of text messages that I'm 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 discipline distance 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 then 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 everyday like food and water place to sleep access to warmth especially in the winter and Abed I've gone through lots of times in my life where I don't have a bad breath to sleep on the floor or sleep on the couch or sleep 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 if you could comment my favorite animal which is unicorn so if you made it through comment unicorn

first thing before I start this I saw

the other day that I got I noticed the other day the host what I hope that you'll get from this driving downtown to

meet my sister for coffee

I was driving downtown to meet my sister

for coffee when and as I was driving through [Music] I was hit by a guy hitting him Prince Allah being a prince and he was driving really fast so so what I am trying to

say by all of what I'm trying to say so what I've been trying to get to from this whole story [Music] is that [Music]