And I will swallow my pride.
You’re the one that I love
And I’m saying goodbye.
Say Something – A Great Big World
For the past 24 hours I’ve been wallowing in shit … deep shit.
Nothing I say, nothing I think, nothing I do, will help me find a way out of the poop fest in which I find myself.
The details don’t matter. To protect the innocent and the people in my life who insist on censoring me — “We love you and support your writing dream, Barb, but don’t write about us” — I’ll write as generically as I can. This isn’t about anyone. This is about me.
I’m hurt. I’m frustrated. And I don’t know what to do to make it stop.
It’s as if I’m meant to stay and feel these feelings until they resolve themselves.
But what if there was some magic switch to turn off those feelings? What if I could hit the rewind button and take back the things I’ve said that are now coming back to bite me in the ass and hurt those I love? What if I could undo the mistakes of the past?
Would I take advantage of those what ifs? Or would I do things exactly the same as I did them before?
I’d love to think that given the chance for a do over, I’d do things differently. But then life gives me that do over and there I am, ready to commit emotional suicide yet again. So much for learning from my mistakes.
It’s true what they say. The definition of insanity is doing things the same way over and over again and expecting different results.
“Have you gone mad?” a friend asked me yesterday.
Yes, perhaps I have. But sometimes you have to go insane in order to recapture your sanity.
“Things are exactly the way they are supposed to be,” that same friend said.
God, I hate it when people throw my words of wisdom back at me. But my friend is right.
The pain I’m feeling right now is a result of reaching a fork in the road where I know which path to take, while every fiber of my being is pushing me onto a path that looks enticing but ends with a fall from a precipice so high that I will never recover from the injuries.
Sometimes you have to say goodbye to the path of “what if” — to what could have been — in order to make room for something even greater … what is.
This doesn’t negate anything or diminish the intensity of the feelings that threaten to overwhelm me. It’s impossible to ask the complexities of human emotion to go away on demand.
I’m not giving up on anyone or anything.
I’m just taking a moment to catch my breath, enjoy the view from where I stand, give thanks for the blessings I’ve been given, and know that if I do this right, there will always be a hand to guide my heart every step of the way.
That’s what I’m saying.
Trading Barbs With Barb 