Living

From future, to past, to present

This topic has been on my mind for months, it keeps resurfacing, I can't avoid it.
I'm trying to become more conscious, more mindful, in my thinking.
I have a lot of alone time to think and I've come to realize something about myself over the last year or so.
For so very long, I lived in the future.
As a kid it was:
"when I'm a teenager"
"when I can drive"
"when I turn 18"
 That turned into:
"when I get my degree"
"when I get married"
"when I'm done having babies"
"when the kids are bigger"
Everything seemed to be a hurdle,  but I was always focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.
When I was pregnant with Elise I had a 13 year old,  a 4 year old and a 2 year old.  I was in school full time doing my internship for my master's degree.  I was tired and probably a little grumpy.  But I knew that in a few months school would be over (for good as I'd been in grad school for 5 years at this point) and I wouldn't be pregnant.  Things would be different,  they'd be better.
HA! Thank you universe for squashing that theory.
So then I began to live in the past.
What did I do,  didn't I do,  could I have done,  should I have done so things didn't turn out this way?
Why did my baby die?
Why did my husband cheat?
Why did I let him back in?
Why didn't I focus more on my family?
It took a long time to realize that no amount of thinking and analyzing would change anything that happened so I had to just learn from it (hopefully) and went back to thinking of the future.
"once the divorce is final"
"once the house is sold"
"once I have a full time job"
"once the kids are old enough"
"once I have my own permanent place for my kids and myself"
Often the questions from the past crept in and I knew it was just the anxiety and depression but boy did they talk loud, and MEAN.
I had many dark times where I couldn't stop the thoughts and then they would snowball into dark thoughts of the future.
It was bad, real bad sometimes.
I'm very thankful I made it through those days, some of them just barely,  but I made it.
And here I am now,  learning to live in the present.
Being grateful for what's here now.
Loving the life we're in day to day.
That's not to say there aren't things I look forward to or times I don't think about the past,  but more often than not they are fleeting thoughts,  not overwhelming distortions of reality.
I still once in a while get caught up in other people's perceptions of what I've done or who I should be and my own insecurities, but overall I know exactly who I am,  where I am,  and just how blessed I am.
So when the occasion presented itself to finally get that tattoo I've been wanting for years,  I took the earliest appointment I could to do it now,  not later,  now.
Enough time has been spent planning for one day, today is one day.
And while Elise's handprint does represent my past,  it is undoubtedly one of the biggest shapers of my present and my future and I'm so incredibly stoked to have a daily physical representation of what's daily in my mind and heart but often not spoken of.