Out Alive

As the congregation stood to sing for the deceased, my three-year-old cousin delivered the most flawless rendition of Happy Birthday I’ve ever heard.

To this day I have never heard so much happiness in the laughter of the heartbroken.

For the twenty seconds it lasted before my aunt heroically whisked her away, I finally understood what they meant when they said, “Don’t take life too seriously. No one gets out alive anyways.”

Dark. But I get it.

Fast-forward seven years to twenty five year old me, sitting in a too small bath tub on Thanksgiving, trying to stifle my tears with the better half of a 13oz bottle of Whiskey. All because an irrelevant boy who didn’t deserve a second chance royally fucked up the one he got.

In the midst of recounting all the times he had sent me to the bottle and the bath to drown my upsets, I thought once again of Rhianna. Standing proudly in her funeral dress, which she would likely outgrow within the next forty-five minutes, belting out Happy Birthday as if she were blind auditioning for The Voice.

She didn’t know it at the time, but in those few moments she was choosing to be happy. She was choosing to not take life so seriously.

I choose being undoubtedly goofy and carefree even when it doesn’t make a lot of sense to be, because at the end of the day no one makes it out alive anyways.

Fuck it.

Because coming home from having my heart dragged through the mud (again) to fireball shots and laughter over how it all went down felt a hell of a lot better than violently sobbing into my mothers shoulder mere hours later when I decided to let it hurt instead.

All I got out of it was a wicked headache and bruised eyelids.

At the end of the day it’s life. It’s bullshit. It’s a boy who broke me over and over again just to satisfy his own selfish needs. It’s the punch line to a joke told too soon, and an anecdote to what will one day be a great story. It sucks, but why take it so seriously when the alternative is so much better.

Before I let the weight of what happened consume me, I was better than alright. I was in stitches with the people that I love over something that wont even matter in the grand scheme of things.

And I let that be my lesson that I might as well button up my dress and get my Happy Birthday on because what else is there to do.