(Colouring by me. Done while hanging with kids)
I am a very neglectful member of the Ladies of Hive community, but when I saw this prompt I felt the need to answer it. Partly because it's a question that's been on my mind for a while. Esp as someone whose struggled with mental health a lot and in the past had some pretty significant suicidal ideations. (Very rare these days)
Right now in your life, what feels like your main reason for living?
How would you describe your purpose at this moment, and what keeps you moving forward each day?
There was a time that my answer to this would have been some grumpy or profanity laced variation of "What's the alternative?". I have been suicidal(again not for a long while. If you're in the thick of that I feel for you, please feel free to reach out to me if ya want to talk with someone whose been there.) During those times my main reason for not opting out of life was knowing it would absolutely devastate my mom. And she's an awesome mom and didn't deserve that. So I endured.
Now though, my reason for living is well, life. While I do complain about my health(Which I feel I'm allowed to do when I've had bronchitis 3 times already this calendar year.) by and large my life is quite frankly, awesome.
I love my jobs, all three of them. I work with people who are by and large compassionate, caring and have a sense of humour. There's something about working with disabled people that in my experience attracts people with kindness and empathy.
In one job I work with adults and I can tell they don't get near as much time treated like a person as they would like. They love hanging out with people who care, who want to see them thrive. I get to see them excited and happy because I'm there. It's quite frankly a privilege.
My second job is working with kids who are some combination of autistic, ADHD, or something else. I'm part of a therapeutic recreation team, which means we do stuff that's fun but also helps
them gain skills like fine motor control, learning to interact with others and just generally have a safe and enjoyable time. I'm also a respite working with the same organization which means I get to be the fun aunt for a kid so their primary care taker gets a breather. I've been with the same kiddo for over a year and it's been really cool seeing him grow up.
And my last job is a supply educational assistant. This means that
when someone calls in sick I could be the one to fill in. I've done everything from kindergarten to Highschool. And in some ways it's been really healing. There's a lot of stuff that was the norm when I was in school that isn't there anymore, and seeing kids treated well, seeing kids that are struggling treated nicely by their peers, it's awesome.
Finally there's my downtime. I'm finally at a place with my mental health thatI can enjoy learning art. I'm not just using it as an escape. I'm at a point where I'm drawing daily and loving it. I get to play dungeons and dragons with two different groups of friends. The evenings are spent either at work(recreation therapy is in the afternoon/evening), or hanging out with my parents watching tv and/or playing video games or doing art.
The downside is that despite having 3 part time jobs I still don't get a full 40hours of work a week so paying off my student debts is going a lot slower then I'd like. But by and large life is awesome. So I don't need some bigger reason to exist. I also know how lucky I am to have this life and have a living situation where having a kinda low income isn't resulting in either food or housing insecurity.