Giving up the "why me" fallacy...

We've learned to run from anything that's uncomfortable.

I was driving down Penman today (which is apparently a very thought-provoking road, as that is where I have come up with many of my posts), listening to my new love, Paramore, when Hayley sang this line. I thought about it immediately in reference to the fact that I spend much of my time in a long-distance relationship. This, above all others, can definitely be described as uncomfortable, to say the least. When I started dealing with this situation, I suffered from serious depression and your basic case of misery.

I'm in the business of misery.

In fact, this continued for years. Each time I would try to come up with different ways to cope, nothing seemed to work. When I would become highly agitated, I would sit with how I felt and try to label all the feelings. There was sadness, of course, and anger over being sad. There was guilt for being angry at the person I loved most, followed by distress over the fact that this was what I faced for the rest of my life. As well as, anger over being put in this situation I never asked for or wanted, along with, jealousy that others were with him when I was not. And then more guilt over not being more supportive. I was a heap of mess. It was a sick cycle that seemed to have no end. I would constantly tell myself- this is not how I pictured my life to be.

And then a few months ago it finally sunk in. Life will never be how you imagined it would. Life does not follow a recipe. And, thank God for that. How boring it would be if it did. It's like with the flowers outside my window, which by the way I saw more of today! We cannot compare our present state of affairs to a photograph we hold in our heads. Especially one that was created years ago. It's like when I planned to be a marine biologist at age 10, and at age 18, found it was not to be.

Some things I'll never know, and I had to let them go.

We never know what will happen in the future. Of course, it is the human condition to plan, there's no harm in that. But it's when you attach yourself to that plan that you sentence yourself to a life of misery. When life takes a turn from what you expected, asking "why me" or "why now" or just plain "why" will get you nowhere. Accepting that it is and living around it is so much healthier. The other day I was really missing my husband, and this time, when I stopped to label my feelings, there was only one. I just missed him, plain and simple. And, that was so much easier to deal with than the jumble of complex emotions of the past that only served to make my life complicated. In this case, simplicity it definitely the preferred method.

I've gone for too long living like I'm not alive
So I'm going to start over tonight.



Life has no roadmap. And distance is just a line on a globe.