I have a sense of what is right or wrong. I try my best to do no wrong and not to be a bad person. But I also keep on making bad decisions. Or that is how I feel every time something goes wrong with my life.
This year had been a struggle — physically, mentally and financially.
I used to think writing on Medium was a stable source of income — it crashed in 2023.
. . .
By December of 2022, I was sick. I had to stop the daily grind of writing stories, in the hope that one of them would go viral enough to pay my bills.
It worked for a few months in 2022, until it didn’t.
And when I recovered from months of being sick, everything had changed.
Thinking that writing was a permanent side hustle was a bad decision.
I should have invested my time in looking at other ways to make money online.
What about being in a relationship?
We met a few months after Mom died. It was still during the pandemic. It was supposed to be a hookup, and yet we managed to still be together after two years.
Was I ready to be in a relationship while I was still grieving?
Or that I was even prepared to live with someone I hardly knew?
It was a decision made in haste.
I was also jobless and had very little money I could call my own, after being one of my Mom’s caregivers in the last seven years.
I was 52 when I met him and I never wanted to be financially dependent on someone even if that someone happened to be a lover.
But today at 54, my partner takes care of me.
Dog ownership
My partner thought I was too depressed after the building dog to which I got attached suddenly had to be moved by the owner.
He got me our fur baby — Phi Phi.
While I tell Phi Phi every day that I love her, she came to us when she was two months old and I wasn’t ready to take care of a puppy.
But I managed, waking up every two hours when she needed to pee outside of our room and she quickly became part of my routine.
I never had enough sleep, as I would write, do house chores, and take care of Phi Phi.
My relationship with my partner had to take a backseat.
Now, I can say, I wouldn’t have traded it for anything but the lack of sleep took a toll on my physical health.
As if one isn’t enough, I had to adopt another dog — Crocker.
I thought that adopting and saving him from the pound was doing a good deed. I never really thought if it was a wise decision.
With two dogs, and a household to take care of, figuring out how to make money from writing and being in a relationship overwhelmed me.
Was having dogs a bad decision?
Money
After Mom died, I had to figure out how I could sustain myself. It was still the pandemic, and while my siblings were ready to help me financially and even got me an apartment to be closer to our Dad, I didn’t want to be a burden.
Besides, not only was everyone grieving and having a hard time during the pandemic, but my relationship with my siblings only had started to heal from years of being complicated.
A year into living with my partner, by the second quarter of 2022, I was earning enough money to put my share with the expenses. Whatever little spare I had, I would buy both Phi and Crocker their favorite treats.
The only thing I bought for myself was an iPad.
When I got sick, I decided to get a loan, a bad decision since the money I anticipated would come from writing didn’t come.
Keeping it a secret was taking a toll on my mental health and was making me upset all the time.
It was a bad decision, that later on I had to confess to my partner.
Everything in 2023 wasn’t happening as planned.
Soon I thought leaving my partner was the only decision I could make for myself.
Moving out of our apartment
It was the only way we could save the relationship.
One of the reasons we had to move was that Crocker wasn’t welcome in the old building unit where were staying and where my partner had been living for almost eight years.
Suddenly the rules on dogs had changed.
My earlier decision was to move back to our old house, where I used to stay with Mom and take my dogs with me even if I didn’t have any money.
My partner found us a new apartment instead.
It was a few days into the new apartment that I felt the decision to move was made in haste and a bad decision.
A question lingered in my mind if we could afford it, the rent is twice as much, and I hardly have anything to contribute.
I felt it was unfair to my partner.
Also, Crocker began to exhibit bad behavior or that was what I thought, but it could be he had a hard time adjusting to the new place.
The only solution I could think of was for us to give him up, but every time I thought of it, it broke my heart.
I prayed so hard for things to change, and it did during the storm. Crocker was always afraid of the thunder so I had to let him in and spend extra time with him until the storm passed.
After the storm, everything improved.
I didn’t have to give up on Crocker.
Bad decisions
I can’t undo my bad decisions. Sometimes I punish myself by replaying all the bad decisions in my head.
Some of the things I thought were bad decisions were also my biggest life savers. Being in a relationship is never easy, but today after two years my partner has proven countless times that he wants us to be together.
I had doubts about our future, but today it’s not a question that keeps on popping in my head.
The time I devoted to writing wasn’t wasted time. I learned a lot and it is a skill I can use for life.
I had made money from writing, and I can do it again.
While I would advise anyone to think about dog ownership a million times, my dogs are my family. Without Phi Phi and Crocker, it could have been easier for me to walk out of my relationship.
The lesson I learned this year is that we can never really tell if we made a good or bad decision. It is only our perception that determines if a decision is good or bad.
20/20 vision is always in hindsight.
Although I would choose not to make decisions when I’m angry, it clouds my judgment and when emotions take over, it is easy to be irrational.
There was a time when I thought being a caregiver to Mom was a bad decision, and that there wasn’t going to be a life after it was over, but time had proven me wrong.
I am glad that I served Mom, while I wished I could have been more giving, loving, and grateful. Now I can’t even find a better reason for being alive.
There were times when I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But if it happened before Mom got sick, it would have broken her heart.
There is a life after Mom.
As there will always be a life after a bad decision, and while there will always be consequences from a decision, I also know that I will survive as I always have.
We all do.
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This post was previously published on The Narrative Arc.
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