We all have a story. Every person you see has some sort of tale behind them. One that makes them smile. One that sends bone-chilling shudders down their spine. One that has scarred them and left them withering in paranoia. Or one that brings tears to their eyes just thinking about it. You, yourself are currently living your own story. Everyday of your life is a whore new chapter to the story of your journey called life. Some of our stories are very lengthy and packed with several pages, white others are dreadfully short.
Some of the most boring people that you see could have a very suspenseful story behind them. One with an amazing journey full of cliff hangers that would leave you wide eyed. The cold-hearted people that wear a scowl that appears to be permanently etched into their features, could have a heartbreaking story. One with a cruel lover that hurt them emotionally or physically and left them that way. Even the most cheery and optimistic people could hold a tale of tragedy. SO many people hold a tale deep down in their souls that have formed them into the person that they've become to be.
But as I grew up I learned one dear thing, that so many lack to even consider. Just because your life is your story, It doesn't make you the author of it. Meaning that you can't control the things that happen in your life. Life will throw so many things at you, and you can't stop it. The only thing you can really do it try to get through it.
Now you may be wondering what my story is. Well my story is more of a side ploy ot a cause and effect story to another story. My family's story. My family's story is a tale of romance, death, pain and sorrow. A story of how we faced more faults than any family should. From all the times we spent at the hospital waiting on a report of a family member, whose life could be slowly fading away. To the many funerals we attended as a pastor talked on about one of our loved one's life, before we would lower them to the depths of the dark Earth. Never to see the light of day again.
But facing these awful moments did some good for my family and I. It pulled us together as a whole. It tightened the strings of our loosening bonds. It exposed us to the truth that you can't just play with life and how it takes more than a pat on the back to get through the long twenty-four hour days. You can't just take life for granted or the people in it. You can't just jump around the cliffs of life with a care in the world, because one day you might just fall. You have to watch what you say to people because it may be the last thing you could every say to them.
Life isn't some game where you can quit when it's all falling apart around, and you do it again. No. You have to keep going through it all while it all crashes around you burying you within its debris. You have to climb through it all and move forward. One step in front of the other, even if it takes small baby steps.
Thats what I learned from my family's story. Our story is one that will follow me till the day I die. Sometimes it makes me smile, other times it makes me cry. The story that made me want to give up. But I didn't, I went on one step at a time and was blessed with many gifts. This is the story that left my family in tears. This is the story that taught me so much. This is the story of the good times that made us smile. This is the story of the bad times that left us sobbing. This is the Holland family story. This is The Good, The Bad, and The Hollands.
-Nicollette Holland