What would you do if you were given $35,040? Pay off loans? Buy a car? A house? Go big AND go home?
Now what if you got that in time? What would you do with 35,040 hours?
If someone had asked me this question 4 years ago, I don't know what I would have said. That number seems so confusing when it's not in a quantity that makes "sense". With money, you know how to spend it, but for some reason with time, the thought seems abstract or even impossible to quantify. For me though, that question makes more sense now than ever because 4 years ago... 35,040 hours ago, I was given this exact gift.
You know that song lyric, "Started from the bottom now we here"? I think nearly everyone does (well played Drake). This lyric was and is the perfect depiction of my relationship with my now husband. Starting from the bottom wasn't just a metaphor for climbing some social ladder, it was the literal example of where we were - where my husband was on his mattress on the floor in his nearly empty one bedroom apartment. He had found himself at the bottom of his life at the peak of an addiction that was desperate to keep him. He had nothing to show for his life up to that point but a handful of failed relationships, a Chevy Cobalt, and an apartment that was littered with drugs and broken people. It was, as many people can imagine, devastating and not really the type of thing you want to put on your resume.
Jesse called on Valentine's Day that year (2015), and in a scattered and reckless phone call he suggested that I be his girlfriend. And I, with little to no idea what I was agreeing to, said "sure" as though I were agreeing to plastic instead of paper at the grocery store. It was an effortless and easy answer for me, despite the fact that the aforementioned resume screamed, "DO NOT HIRE ME."
Seven days after he asked me to be his girlfriend he went silent. I heard nothing. We had had plans to go out, but I was receiving radio silence. I was heartbroken, confused and unsure of what was going on. I reached out to our mutual friend who I knew was with him pretty often and was met with a stock response, "He's asleep." It was nearly 36 hours before I heard anything, but when I did I received a gift of 35,040 hours.
I
didn't know it then, but that gift would develop into one of the best and most thoughtful gifts I have received to date. Everything else that has happened since has been a direct result of that initial gift of time. It was and is everything to me. 4 years ago my husband called to tell me that if he continued on the path that he was on he wouldn't make it out alive. He admitted that things had gone too far and that if this was really going to work, this seemingly on a whim relationship of ours, something had to change. My husband chose recovery on this very day, 35,040 hours ago and hasn't given so much as a side eye glance to drugs since.
In the last 35,040 hours we have been through nearly a lifetime's worth of events. We've experienced some of the most incredible and at times, awful things together, but nothing can ever compare to that day. That day was our absolute lowest. We were further below the bottom than either of us cared to admit and it was going to take a serious amount of dedication and intentionality to pull through it all. I'm happy to report that we have done just that.
35,040 hours of time that we've spent creating the most solid foundation I've ever known. I am writing this from the comfort of our beautiful home while our handsome and strong-willed toddler naps in his own room. Our mattress is on a box spring AND a frame... yes Drake, "now we here." We are here. $35,040 would be incredible, but it will never compare to the time we've been able to spend growing this - The Yearley Fam.
Not all addiction stories end with a "happily ever after" nor am I naive to believe that ours has. Recovery is a daily agreement that my husband makes with God, himself, and me. You don't just give up an addiction and become a brand new person. You put in a serious amount of effort and time to create and cultivate a clean life. Today that means that Jesse has put in 35,040 hours worth of time toward recovery. We don't know what tomorrow will hold. For today, we are going to celebrate this time that we have been given - all 4 years - 48 months - 1,460 days - 35,040 hours - 2,102,400 seconds, because that gift, was the gift that kept giving.
Xx,
Mrs. Yearley
Note: Reposted from my previous blog.
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