I'm not an optimist, but I'm a pretty good dancer. I've tried, oh, how I've tried to become an optimist. Just like I've tried to be a morning person who greets life with a smile and hits the gym before work and does the prayers and the meditating before the real day has begun...yeah. No. Someday maybe, but so far, it's not worked out that way.
I have "The Power of Positive Thinking" in a full CD set and I've listened to it over and over. I have countless books on how to change your thinking. I've done meditations, prayers, read books and articles and been to hundreds of therapy sessions on how to change and rewire my brain from being negative to positive. I've had some success and I've made some progress, but overall, I'd say I'm still not an optimist. However, this quote really struck me. I've taken many steps forward and back in my life and although I've been knocked down a few times, I'm still standing.
As I type this I'm sick - again. 2019 was supposed to be "the year" and perhaps it still will be, but it's had a rocky beginning. We came back from vacation and I thought I was pregnant. I thought, wow, this is it! All the hope, all the prayers, all the work and THIS IS IT! We've finally done it. I believed that I had let it go - like really - and that the reason I was pregnant was because I did finally "relax" and left all my hopes on the beach and entrusted God to just let it happen when I least expected it. I believed that I really *did* just need to go on vacation! All those folks who said that - all those well-meaning folks - were right! Alas, it was not it. I was late, only to find out that I was just that, late. It was to put it into one small word: devastating. Not because I wasn't pregnant (well partly because of that) but more so because I wasn't really done. Oh, I thought I was done and that I had moved on and had truly accepted where we were and that I wasn't attached to the outcome anymore, but that was indeed, not true.
I fell hard back into depression in a way I haven't in a long time and not only was I mentally a hot mess, but then physically sick. So I spent January trying to just get through the days without crying and trying to make different plans and trying to just breathe and let it go. It's not cancer and nobody died I kept telling myself. I kept trying to "no big deal" my own feelings and that was total bullshit. So I finally let myself cry it out and feel whatever I needed and picked up the pieces and decided to try again. Reset 2019 I'm calling it.
Might have to reset 2019 a couple times (insert laughing emoji) because just as I was getting back on track, hitting the gym again and back on my meditations and prayers and setting a new plan for our family planning - bam! Sick. Bam! Setback in our plans (thanks insurance and constant hoops of fire, which I just cannot go into because it would be a book) for fertility interventions. Bam! Work crap. BUT, it's OK! And I'm not "no big dealing" my feelings this time - I am learning that these setbacks can and will be reset, just as they have in the past.
Good news is - although I'm not an "optimist" still - I am quicker to go to the positive and to get back up after a fall and it gets easier the more I practice. That is true progress. I do eventually look on the bright side and I do eventually get down on my knees and pray it out and let it go. I do eventually laugh out loud and put on my dancing shoes and make the messiest of one step forward and two steps back look like a wonderfully choreographed dance.
