The Afterlife In This Life

   When you hear the afterlife you're probably imagining angels and streets of gold, but that's not the afterlife I'm talking about. I'm talking about the afterlife after tragedy. A.T.
  You see I believe we all have two lives and two selves. Our lives and selves before tragedy(B.T.) and after tragedy(A.T.). I guess that kinda throws a monkey wrench in the whole YOLO thing(YOLO= you only live once).
    When I think of who I was and how I looked at life before James died it's as if I'm watching a movie about someone else. Just a few days before it happened the future with my child felt just around the corner. Now the future with a baby is more murky and distance than before.
    In some ways I'm still the same girl. I like the same foods, I watch the same shows, I take my coffee the usual way(two creamers and a half of a splenda). But things are different now. I don't assume things will be okay, in fact I KNOW things won't always be okay. That's not to say I can't have a mostly happy life, but it does mean I can't go back to my old life.
    Tragedy and mourning changes us. Sometimes in good ways. It makes us remember that things are precious and to not take for granted that things will stay the same. Because they won't.
    Tragedy is like a fork in the road. You can't go back, you can only go left or right. Sometimes it's hard to know which road is worth taking. But take one you must, you can only stand there but so long before a car comes.
    I believe everyone will have their own tragedy on this earth. That doesn't mean that we'll all have a child die or that most people would even recognize it as tragedy. We might even have had an event in our life that we thought was our tragedy and it turns out our tragedy hadn't hit us yet.
   I tend to think the person we become A.T. is our true self. That's doesn't mean that self is better or worse, in fact it might be hard to compare. Comparing is futile anyways, it can never change the life and self you have now.
    My old life is locked up behind a gate along with the girl I used to be. For a while I banged on the gates and pulled on the locks and chains. Some days I still do. But I'm slowly beginning to see that that's where the old me belongs. The me I am today is more of a melting pot of something new and something old. Not totally the new girl, not totally the old girl. Like I'm the old girl's slightly wiser older sister.
   Whatever life you're in right now, B.T. or A.T., just remember things won't always be the same and neither will you. But that's the beauty in life, it doesn't stop moving.