If I die tomorrow.

June 29, 2017/Dusti

I have been a very lucky human.

I have loved and been loved deeply over and over again, and when I see the people around me who haven’t been lucky enough or brave enough to do the same, I wonder how they keep moving through each day carrying a chasm like that inside of themselves. Because in any moment where I’ve felt lonely, I’ve been able to see how temporary that state is.

When I think of how many days I spent thinking that I was a fundamentally flawed person who was lucky anyone cared about them, let alone anyone worth their salt, I shake my head. How could I have ever thought something so wicked? So perfectly false. For years, I diminished myself in the name of men terrified of me when I rode my edges. I married the first boy who ever looked at me, and when I think about the ways I wasted myself there and laid waste to myself, I feel sick.

I’m never going to see my children grow up. But maybe that’s for the best anyway. They will both remember me before they realized I didn’t know everything and was barely making my way through any of this life with any sort of grace anyway.

But grace is overrated, and I hope you tell them that. What matters is the fall. The willingness to jump before you bothered to check if there’s a parachute attached to you because the glory of the freefall feels so unimaginably right. The ability to see your fear and the risk you will take to overcome it, and do it even when nothing feels more terrifying.

If I’ve done nothing else, I’ve lived when so many others around me were too scared to. And I’ve never understood why. But the reality is I’m happier to die now having lived my life the way I have then live a moment longer and have to settle for anything less the romance and adventure I crave.

***

This post was a response to one of Jeanette LeBlanc’s writing prompts from her incredible writing course, Unleashed. Highly recommended.

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Dusti Arab, Reinvention Co, Marketing Strategist, CMO, Host of the Referral Worthy Podcast

Dusti Arab, Fractional CMO

And the founder of the reinvention co, a marketing consultancy specializing in working with personality-driven companies with small teams.

Intense, fun, and relentlessly practical, Dusti understands the lives of small business owners are deeply intertwined with their businesses, and if their marketing is going to be sustainable, it can't get in the way of why they do what they do. (And honestly? It should be fun so they actually want to do it.)

She is the host of Referral Worthy, a podcast for small business owners ready to go from "best kept secret" to the go-to name in their niche.

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