“All great discoveries...are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.”
- Mark Helprin
Today I made a pot of coffee but I forgot to pour the water from the pot into the reservoir. I got angry, unplugged the whole device and walked into my room before I realized what I'd done. How I was, in fact, angry and disappointed and upset but it was because of something I hadn't seen all of the way through. I'm sure you can weed out the metaphor here.
I've been feeling angry. Disappointed. Upset. Frustrated about a lot of things lately. And the act of being constantly let down is exhausting. But what do you do when you're constantly being let down by yourself? You can blame other people, surely. Or you can accept that the circumstances you've stepped into are in fact that: circumstances that you have utterly chosen and accepted and allowed.
Normal doesn't exist except at the most base and personal level. You create your own version of normal, and if that version of normal feels abnormal then it's your job to change it.
I was recently voicing my frustrations to a friend and they told me to make a T chart which I inevitably couldn't complete.
I found that too many things fell somewhere down the middle, in a grey area. Everything at the cost or exception of something else. Everything had a subtle "but..." at the end.
And I guess that's when I realized that creating some neat and tidy pros and cons list is just ... not conducive to making a life worth living. It's conducive more to bulldozing the life you have and starting a new one.
But I'm more interested in investing in what I've already got -- the foundation is good, it could just use some touching up -- instead of scrapping everything because I lost my job, or my mental health is a little in flux, and my boyfriend and I argue about stupid things.
Instead I'm more interested in going into my proverbial house, fixer upper though it may be, and repairing it one room at a time. Until, with it, my confidence is rebuilt and everything else falls into place.
