I was reading something about how today is Yom Kippur. I confess, I don't know much about it, or any of the Jewish holidays for that matter. The blurb I read mentioned this being a day of prayer, repentance, and ...fasting or feasting? It took me another look to see it was indeed fasting. That got me thinking how one letter can throw the entire word to the exact opposite meaning. It then got me thinking about how tiny a thing the line is between good and bad, happiness and misery, success and failure.
Between the good and bad was one secret ill intent, one misguided action (repeated several times, mind you), and one seemingly innocent sleight (again, repeated over and over). This is the situation that caused my most recent, and most severe, tailspin, but also really set me on the path I'm on now. In a perfect world and in theory, it could have been a good situation. More love = more happiness... right? Taking the one part ill intent out of the equation for a moment, there were missteps that were certainly not malicious, but no doubt careless and thoughtless. The fact that any of it was allowed to go on in the first place was due to my own fear and insecurity. Yes, there was some dishonesty, stupidity, and a complete lack of consideration for anything I'd said, but it was also an extraordinarily bad decision on my part. The result was a soul-shattering pain that I never thought possible. I'd rather a lifetime of physical pain on par with childbirth than just one more day of that pain.
Between happiness and misery was one thought. Just one small thought. One day, as I sat there miserable and shell-shocked, I wrote. The writing started in the same tortured place it had been for a while: What did I do wrong? Why did this happen? I must be an awful person, because it's certainly not THEIR fault! I reread that last part over and over again. Then I started thinking: What can I do to make myself worthy of love again? It was at that point that I realized that happiness can be all about the choice to be happy. Just one thought. How am I going to greet the day? I can say "Oh bother, it's going to be a right shitty day" OR I can open my eyes and say "It's going to be a good day". In truth, it doesn't always end up being a fantastic day, but when I started my day up instead of down, I had much further to fall before I hit the ground. It was also about seeing situations a bit differently. For example: Oh, I see it's raining out. Old reaction: Well, that sucks, it's going to be a crappy day. New reaction: Ooh! It's going to be a bit cooler, maybe this humidity is going to break, and honestly, the rain is beautiful. Do I sound like one of those annoyingly upbeat twits yet? Trust me, I know how silly it sounds. When you're drowning, you'll hang on to the pink ducky float just to survive sometimes. It took a long time, some outside influences, and a metric TON of effort, but I've now learned what happiness and contentment feel like. I still have hurdles and obstacles, but I know I've got the foundation to get through it all. And I also realized that I was worthy of love all along, I'm not an awful person, and it was their fault (as well as mine).
Between success and failure is my frame of mind. Much like happiness, I can throw up my hands and decide it's not going to work the way I want it to, and I will fail. If I keep trudging on, I'll find the success I am supposed to find. I have successfully found the courage to walk away from everything I know to start a new life somewhere else. I have successfully found a wonderful man who treats me the way I deserve to be treated (and who I am more than happy to treat the way he deserves to be treated). I have successfully found happiness in my life and who I am. I have successfully lost around 50 lbs, with only about 5-10 to go. I feel I will be successful in finding a job, a place, and a good life. I feel I will be successful going to school. If I can't hack the physics part of things, I will not be discouraged. There are other things I can (and want to) study. I will not give up. I will not quit.
I feast on happiness, on love. I feast on hope and potential. I've realized that, regarding drama and negativity, I must fast. That meant giving up a lot of people I thought were friends, but who were actually detriments to my sanity. In part, I don't know that I'm completely strong enough to deal with some of that at this point, but also I recognize how badly that drama and negativity was poisoning my waters. I do still deal with some things and some people that aren't necessarily upbeat, but I have prioritized them in my life. They are people I consider family, people I would kill for. They are the ones worth the small amount of negativity I'm willing to eat these days. But that is in moderation. I choose to gorge myself on better things.
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