Life has a strange way of doing whatever it wants. You can keep planning all day long, meticulously putting your life in order on paper, and then suddenly life happens. I’m constantly in defence-mode. Because I’ve always had to fight to get to where I am today, it seems to be ingrained in me to keep fighting. Being the decision-maker for my family has also ensured that I’ve turned into some kind of a bossy boots which, surely, can’t be all that bad a thing. It keeps me focused on what I want from life and I keep marching forward towards it to try and get on with it.

Then, like I said, life happens.

You can try as hard as you like to change your current circumstances but nothing will change if you don’t change your attitude towards it. This morning, my daughter was being dropped to school and the vehicle was in an accident. Of course I panicked as I was not in the car. Her phone doesn’t work so she tried calling me from the driver’s phone. The phone was on silent and I didn’t hear it. Had she called me from her phone, it would have rung as I have configured my phone to ring when my kids call regardless of phone status.

The dramas continued. She managed to get through to my brother who went over and dropped her off at school. I found out the whole situation of what had happened and was extremely angry and upset, but did I have control over what had happened? No. I was simply grateful that my child wasn’t hurt.

I called her school to talk to her and to check up on her but she seemed distant towards me, and I interpreted it as though she thought it was my fault I didn’t answer the phone. I did feel guilty but as I came and sat at my desk and started journaling, I realised that I had no reason to feel guilty. I have equipped her with a phone, which she broke and I got it fixed. It broke again. I haven’t got around to making it a priority to get her phone fixed because it keeps getting broken, most probably due to carelessness.

So, I decided to unplug today.

I didn’t break the phone. I didn’t smash the car. I am not for blame for whatever happened. In fact, if anything, I did my best to try and control the situation. I checked up on her. I ensured the car had temporary measures put in place to get it fixed. I even called the insurers and the gentleman kindly took over and said he will send over an assessor to check out the damage. I didn’t go running around like a headless chicken. I didn’t try and control what I couldn’t. I just let it be.

All because I decided to unplug…

Edit: This happened a couple of months ago. It’s been in my Drafts folder and I decided to publish it today.