Oh it’s not easy, I know. Trying to figure it all out and still keep the faith that it’ll all be okay. I went through this myself for 8+ years so I completely get it (read my story here). I must have asked myself a million times that looming question:
Why me?
Why wasn’t I healing, why couldn’t I just take Vitamin B like the girl I met in the doctor’s office waiting room that told me it was her miracle cure, why can’t I meditate and make it all go away?
I’ve learned that for some of us it just doesn’t work that way.
Here are three answers to the “Why Me?” question that’ll soothe your soul
Why Me? #1
Because some of us are just meant to take these long, winding journeys that force us to come back to ourselves.
We need to break open, break out, break down, and then rebuild into a space that feels better to us than we would have ever done without massive challenge. Let’s face it — we’re the type who would have just kept pushing through if not for a roadblock the size of Mt. Rainer, right? Yep, I thought so.
Why Me? #2
Your life is trying to pull you in a direction that you wouldn’t or couldn’t have gone otherwise.
When I was sick with Lyme disease, no one could help me. My doctors gave up and I had never felt so alone or scared. Then, after awhile of crying and thinking I would melt into the earth and just die, I decided I had to pick myself up and move on. And I did. To make a long story short, I ended up in India for treatment (more on my story here) and met a girl who is now my beautiful, wonderful, wife. I know deep in my heart that I was meant to meet her and in fact, that she was part of my healing. But there was no way that could have happened without a succession of things that came before — a succession of seemingly crappy things. But sometimes the Universe is directing and redirecting us and we just don’t know all of the reasons why.
Why Me? #3
This path will change your path.
It is sometimes not until you are pulled into the depth of despair that you can gain the type of clarity that helps you see exactly what you want out of this crazy life. It is possible to do it without massive challenge and illness, but many of us just don’t or can’t.
When I first got sick, I was a marketing director for Harley-Davidson. I loved it but it wasn’t “me.” It was what I fell into. The journey of healing led me into the work I do now which feels like what I was born for. While I don’t believe that everyone who goes through something like this is meant to help others (heck, just learning to be YOU is all the world really needs — I swear), that’s how the cookie crumbled for me. And I couldn’t be happier. Literally, I am heaps and heaps happier than I was pre-Lyme disease.
While your own clarity may have nothing to do with career, I guarantee that you will find it in other places: cleaning out your relationship closet, finding little things that make you happy (and not so happy), deciding what’s most important to focus on in your own life, and probably a thousand more things.
Changing the “Why Me?” into “Why Not?”
Next time you ask yourself the “Why Me?” question, ask yourself “Why Not?” Why shouldn’t it be you that gets to go through this metamorphosis into the life that you’re meant to have?
I hope you won’t feel like a victim, but instead will understand that for some of us, this is just how we have to roll for awhile.
You aren’t meant to be sick. But you might be meant to do whatever you’re doing now (just for now) that you would have never gotten to in any other way.
You might have a few more things to learn or clear or a few more things to figure out. You might need to give a little more love and attention to that one simple healing rule I discovered. Or maybe you just need some more vitamin B. Who knows.
But then, after it’s all done even though it seems like it never will be — the world will be all yours. And I promise, you’ll get to have the biggest, best party of a life. One that you could have never imaged before.
