I had an interesting conversation recently.  In it, the idea was posed that some people ‘push through’ and others give up.  I was taken aback by the statement, confused by its context and intent.  But after thinking about it — far too much, I might add — I realized this.

Sometimes it’s about whether you believe, or you have lost faith.

It’s very hard to ‘push through’ when you don’t believe anymore.  And sometimes, when your faith has been pushed to its very limits, and you lose the thread of the narrative, it’s hard to care anymore.

Once upon a time, I was handed a business in a banker’s box.  And over the course of seven years, I learned many things the hard way.  The stress was, at times, unbearable.  But I was proud of what I helped to build, and that made it possible to keep going.  I believed in it fundamentally.  It made the hard times worth the pain, and the great times even sweeter.  But when I began to lose my faith, when I started to not recognize what I thought I’d been part of, it made it challenging to keep going.

It’s hard to walk away from something that used to mean so much.  But I also believe that you have to take care of yourself.  And the best of life has yet to come — the best things are in the future, they are just around the next bend in the road.  It took me a minute to get my brain around my new reality.  I had to forgive myself, and also commend myself for making the best choice for my future.  Life isn’t easy.  But it can be so beautiful if you let it.

And ps.  Hubs and I are seeing ‘Hamilton’ in two days.  I cannot wait!

Twice this winter we have had dire forecasts that amounted to nothing.

Wildly disappointing.

I was looking forward to snow — mounds of snow, the air thick with snow — so much fluffy whiteness and quiet that it drowned out life for a moment.  I was massively let down.

I’ve been in an interesting mindset for the past few weeks.  Not quite sure where I’m going, not quite sure where I’ve come from.  When you spend a significant amount of time in any situation, you lose perspective.  You forget all the compromises you made along the way to get through the day.  Coming to terms with that can be both difficult and humbling. It can make you see yourself in a different light.

I spent many years of my life in abusive relationships.  I kept my head down.  I believed if I loved enough, if I gave enough, then any obstacle could be overcome.  I was wrong.

My husband is a great man.  A kind man, a thoughtful man, a caring man.  I walked through the fires of hell to get to him.  I don’t know what changed in the universe, what realigned karmically that allowed us to meet and make things work.  The timing was terrible.  I mean, it couldn’t have been worse.  We were painfully poor, I was unemployed.  Between us we had debt that could drown better men.  And somehow, we kept our heads down, we held onto each other and we — against all odds — became an unbreakable team.

We both did things along the way that broke us a little.  Things to pay the bills, things to get by.  We compromised our morals, we smiled in the face of ignorance and pettiness.  We held onto each other in the darkest moments, and then we held onto Lucy.  And we believed, unwaveringly, that we would get through to the other side.

A few years ago, after our backyard wedding and living in an 800 square foot apartment for six years, we somehow found ourselves on the other side.  We paid off debt.  We bought a house.  We bought silly cars.  We traveled to Italy, and then Iceland and then to Jackson Hole …. just because we could.

And after all of that, after all the struggle and the smiles and the massive compromises, I broke on the inside.  I lost my drive.  My direction.  I wondered what I was doing with my life.  Why I kept doing it.  I justified it all.  I came up with reasons.  They were good, too.  And they weren’t wrong.  I’d done what I’d done to get to where I stood.

But once I was there, once I had the things I’d worked so tirelessly for, I couldn’t imagine continuing.  I couldn’t imagine keeping up the smiles when I was so desperately, deeply unhappy.

So one would have thought that leaving that situation, walking away from all the burdens that had weighed on my shoulders for years — would make me feel infinitely better.  Strangely and sadly and with much disappointment and bewilderment, it did not.

I find myself, at thirty-seven, wondering who I am, what I stand for.  I don’t have children to help define me, to give me purpose.  And I don’t have the career that I held onto with a vice-like grip, to help me justify the choices I’ve made across the years.

It’s these moments, this struggle for self-discovery that separates the weak from the strong.  How do we rebuild ourselves following ‘the end’?

Last December, as I was celebrating my 36th birthday, my husband dubbed it my “Bettis Year Yet.”  I probably had some thoughts about being on the down side of 35 but he was having none of it.  He smiled at me.  He said “Babe, this time last year you were using a cane to walk.  We still lived in a one-bedroom rental.  This is going to be your Bettis Year yet.  I promise.”

He wasn’t wrong.  It was a Bettis year.  With incredible highs — Italy, Iceland, a return to Jackson Hole, my company growing exponentially, getting in much better shape and losing 15 lbs — but also devastating lows.  With the expansion of my company came the inevitable growing pains — the changing of an institution.  My favorite co-worker, the person I’d bled in the trenches with for years — left.  The infrastructure changed.  I felt lost, confused and unbelievably sad.  I gave my notice four days before my Carnell Lake birthday this year.

But with all that came really beautiful clarity.  And that is something I want to take with me into 2017, into my Carnell Lake year.

Here are some things I know about myself, deep down in the depths of my soul, in the marrow of my bones.

I see the world in black and white.  It doesn’t make things easier for me.  I think — often times — it makes it harder.  The world itself isn’t black and white.  It’s a myriad of gray.  I don’t exist like that.  It makes people resent me because I don’t fit in – it makes them uncomfortable.  It makes me the outsider.

I’ve always been an outsider.  Since birth, probably.  I wasn’t totally American, I am not British.  Because of that, I never fit in anywhere.  I was always a little off, a little different.  I used to fight it, trying so hard to squeeze my square peg into a round hole.  I spent so much time searching for a place to call my own.  I didn’t know that I had to make it myself.

I no longer care if people like me or hate me.  I don’t care if they think I am weird, or a stiff, or un-fun.  I am the only person whose opinion of me matters.  Whether my jeans look good, my shoes are in fashion, my values and morals make sense.  I have to look myself in the mirror and be okay with the decisions I’ve made, the words I’ve said, the direction I’ve chosen.  I have to be able to sleep at night.  I am okay being me.  And I like the real me, the Steelers-loving, Hamilton-listening, Gilmore Girls-watching me.  I like being manic about my skin care, and tracking my water in-take.  I like coming home and snuggling with my husband and dog. I am a-okay with my bed time of 8.30pm.  I like my life.

Life is a short journey.  I know we all feel as though we are rich with time.  But we aren’t.  My heart aches with the thought of leaving my job, leaving the restaurants that feel like my children, the employees, the culture, the love.  But at the end, I was sick with misery.  I was drowning in the blackest depression.  And even if I had no idea what my future held, I knew I had to go.  Because I’m on the clock.  My disease doesn’t care about anything or anyone.  And I might have it corralled for now – meds, and diet and exercise and sleep.  But M.S. can break anything, it has broken me before.  I am not willing to sacrifice myself on any alter but my own.

I hope that this year is filled with laughter and memories.  Sunshine and lazy mornings.  Long walks with my pup and my husband. Family. Chai tea lattes from Starbucks.

I hope I am able to learn things I don’t know, expand my horizons, meet people who challenge my brain.  Learn Spanish, or French, or how to play the damn piano.  I hope I read books and learn to understand the stock market and economics.  I hope I remember to always breath, and find myself on my bicycle.

I hope 2017 proves that maybe 36 was my Bettis year, but it wasn’t my Best.  My best is always the future, the surprises waiting around the corner.  The smell of freshly baked bread, or Stargazer lilies.  The way my husband feels when he holds me close to him.  The soft snuffle of Lucy sleeping on the couch.

Here’s to my Carnell Lake (#37) year and all that it holds.  Happy New Year.

My brain is all over the place.

I read an article in EW recently — a top 50 of things that made people (mostly staff members) happy.  The list varied greatly, but it made me happy just reading what made other people smile.  I thought — what a cool exercise and blog post.

And then at the end of last week my head pretty much exploded with anger because of circumstances at work.  And I sort of blogged about it on Friday, but after forty-eight more hours of thinking and lost sleep, I felt I had other things to say.

Last but not least, I feel as though my face care journey deserves a follow-up.  My last post was sort of ambiguous about how I really felt.  And while I know my thoughts about it all after over sixty days, I figured it might be fair to share it with anyone who actually cares and doesn’t know.

I have a very deep — and inexplicable — love for any Fast & Furious movie with Paul Walker.  The seventh installment was weird — sort of surreal — but the tribute at the end was worth it. My favorite movie of the bunch is “Fast Five” which is the beginning of what my husband and I refer to as the “Ocean’s 11” theme.  And at the very end of the movie, after Vin Diesel and Paul Walker drive off, leaving Dwayne Johnson to check out the battered safe — a piece of music begins.  It’s called “Danza Kuduro”.  I didn’t know that for a long time.  But I love that song, and no matter what, a huge smile takes over my face when I hear it.  That was the first thing I thought about when reading the EW article about happiness.

Something else I love — the softness of my face when I’m done using the cleansing scrub from R+F.  There is something so satisfying about nice, clean skin.  I will confess that I have become a fan.  I like their products.  Not only because they seem to work really well, but they don’t irritate my skin.  And that’s a huge plus.  Additionally, my skin is much less dry — in fact, not really dry at all.  Partially, I’m sure, because I am not washing my face with a foaming face wash anymore, but also because their moisturizers are just amazing.

And finally, in anticipation of a girl’s night out this upcoming Friday, and the hideous-ness of work this past Friday, what I found in my brain flurry and frustration, was a calm constant.  I feel beyond blessed that I do not need to look to external triggers to justify who I am.  Every part of my life is because I made purposeful choices.  And sometimes those choices make things difficult, but I made them because I wanted to live an authentic life.  I wanted to sleep at night, and be content in who I am.  Friday angered me, on a very base level.  But — and this is much harder to remember than to know — most people’s actions are about themselves, and not about the object of their words/actions at all.  I was internalizing something that didn’t need to be given the attention and power that I gave it.  I know who I am, I know my values.  I know who my friends are, and I know I can trust those people.  I feel confident and comfortable in that knowledge.  The strength of the choices I’ve made, and the life I choose to live.  I’ve earned what I have, because I do good, smart work.

And actions always speak louder than words.

There are a few things my husband will tell you about me if you ask him.

The first is that he loves me and I love him.

The second is that I love musical theatre and have been driving him crazy with “Hamilton” since April.

Third, he’d tell you I have a really cool job in the restaurant industry.  (He thinks much more highly of it than I do at times).

And then he’d tell you that under the surface of my benign agreeability, I’m a rampant feminist.  Not like — we don’t shave our under-arms or we spell the word wiomyn with a “y” to avoid the word men. No, no. Not THAT extreme.

But the truth is, I have memories from a young age of my mother surrounded by women from the Berk’s Women’s Network collating newsletters and being very vocal and strong about women’s rights, equality and all that goes along with what I like to call “smart women’s feminism.”

I’ll vote for Hillary because it’s taken until 2016 for a woman to even be considered as a candidate to run our country.  And while she might have some skeletons, she’s smart and she takes a boat load of shit that would never be said to men.

I deal with the undercurrent of sexism on the daily.  Sometimes it rankles me, and other times I just let it slide.  I fight too many battles to work myself into a frenzy every time someone is condescending to me, or treats me as though my brain is somehow on a  lower level than one attached to a penis.

But I will tell you that there are few things that get under my skin more than women who use sex and feigned ignorance and naiveté to achieve things that the rest of us work tirelessly for because we have integrity and self-worth.  And it really angers me when it happens to me repeatedly.

Ladies, let me say this — and I will say it repeatedly and loudly.

Save yourself.  Have enough dignity to look yourself in the mirror and love yourself, flaws and all.  Have enough decency to ask the world to see what you have to offer beyond your pretty face and adolescent boy body.

Not only do you do damage to yourself, but you do damage to every other woman out there, fighting tooth and nail for equality and respect.

Something else my husband might tell you. It takes a while to get to the breaking point. But once I get there, there’s really no coming back.  I’ve worked very hard for everything I have and for everything I do.  I was not given hand outs, or favors.   And I can be just as venomous as I can be kind.  So there’s that.