Get out. Go away.

Dear Invader,

I hate you. YOU are tearing me apart. You make me feel vile. YOU prevent me from having so many things that I want and need. You. I do not want you here.

And what really truly sucks about this? That I have to learn to live with you. You and I – we are not so easily separable. I feed you. You live off me.

What is it about my life force that is feeding you right now? Is it my fear? My desperation? My sadness? My rage? Probably all of the above, right?

How dare you. How dare you take all of this from me - my body, my freedom, my confidence, even my honesty. You are NOT welcome here and I don’t know how to make you go away. I am trying, but apparently not hard enough. And if this continues for much longer, the despair might just be too overwhelming.

This fight exhausts me. Not just the medication, but the shear emotional drain from worrying, fearing, dwelling on what might not happen… ever – you disappearing.

I am going to dig down and find a way to accept you, I will bring an enemy closer. And then I am going to find a way to kill you. Forever. Don’t get comfortable, you won’t be staying for dinner.

Your unwilling host,

Me.

Crossroads

Dear self,

Have you ever come to a crossroads where the future you thought you’d planned on and worked for suddenly ceased to be a possibility? It seems that with time, I have discovered over and over again that the expectations and goals I have long held for myself no longer apply. And in this daunting discovery, I have been forced to reevaluate where I think I am and where I might be going now. So this is life is it - a series of decisions, actions, consequences and readjustments. John Lennon wasn’t kidding when he said, “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

I am currently existing in one of these strange interludes – an adjustment period so to speak. I have long planned to be making an exodus from the life I have led for the past two years – and now I am not leaving. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? My previous exoduses have generally been appropriately planned and executed – but this one doesn’t seem to be coming to fruition. Well, fuck. [Cue dramatic change of current and future expectations.]

So – my question now is, how do we shift our expectations in a healthy way when something like this happens? It’s not a question of which future alternative you would have preferred, but how do you handle the one that is coming to reality? Beats me.

Back to readjustments, I think that our ability to be creative in our understanding of why things happen will only make the future more exciting. We must accept that not everything will work out like we planned – but doesn’t that mean doors we hadn’t considered before might have opened?

My advice from mid-readjustment is this: Go with it. See where it leads you. When things don’t happen the way you planned, it is likely something else – something better – is on the horizon. Don’t forget to look for it.

Keep on keepin’ on.