Hope #7

"Sometimes...for some people...things don't work out as they might have HOPED. .......HOPE...is a currency for people who know they're losing...the more familiar you are with hope the less beautiful it becomes. ....you'll never wake up a new person but someday you might wake up and see things, hear things, and think things differently."*

Yes, I know I've already used this quote in the post "Hope #1". It comforts me at this time.

There have been numerous times when I have come across day-to-day life situations (aka, people) in which I have experienced significant emotional turmoil. First, I always ask myself two things:

1. What can I do to change this situation?
2. What can I do to change the way I react to this situation?
   

If I cannot succeed in the above two questions, then I have to ask myself if I need to remove myself from the situation. Because removing myself from such situation usually causes unpleasant chaos and tumult, I never want to follow-through. However, the inevitable occurs when I become so dysfunctional and distraught that I must follow-through and endure the agony of it regardless.

I have ended many situations in my life, some which could have killed me and others not near so extreme. Sometimes, just removing myself from the situation for a while makes all the difference. Sometimes it is ok to go back to those situations - with a new outlook. Most of the time, it is better to move on (for me anyway).

On a few occasions, an amount of time would go by and I ended up with regrets -- wondering if a made a mistake. Then, some time later, I realized either "That was a good thing to end" or "THANK GOD THAT IS OVER."

As I look around my life now with the need to make some lifestyle changes, I am afraid and can't imagine that any changes I make will be of any good. It seems that everything in my life is just too daunting and impossible to change.

Surprising though, is the answer I get when I was myself if I, at this moment, regret any of those painful foreclosures I have initiated in the past? The answer is a surprising "no." I am unpredictably fine and the better for it (which of course also scares me.)

*Sixteen Years of Alcohol, 2003.