Time For Change

I have always been a worrier. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t worry about things from small to big. When I was in school, on the day I knew I was having a test, my stomach would be in knots. And before I left the house my mother would give me a Certs mint to calm my nerves. It worked for my stomach, but not for my head. As I’ve gotten older, I have more things to worry about even though most of the things that bother me aren’t a big deal, I just make them bigger than they need to be. And only recently have I realized that worrying about something is really just choosing to think about the negative of a situation instead of the positive. Things can go two ways, but by worrying I only concentrate on the negative way they can go instead of focusing on the positive way. And I have to say that this way of thinking has messed me up in a lot of ways.

I don’t know when it started or, more importantly, why it started. I don’t think I ever worried as a young kid. I maybe got nervous about things but never to the extreme. Each time I got up to bat at softball I was nervous that I’d strike out but that quickly passed because I was confident in my ability to hit the ball. As time passed, my confidence dwindled and the worry, the negativity kicked up a notch. I wasn’t confident in who I was and what I could do so I would focus on the negative and worry that I wasn’t good enough or I wasn’t doing enough. I developed a fear within myself that had no place in my life. And I took that fear wherever I went, like a security blanket. That fear lived in everything I did, and I think eventually that fear took over.

I hate being negative, it’s the worst thing about myself. But, like everything else it’s hard to change your way of thinking when you’ve done it for so long. But it’s time to change because I see a part of myself in my daughter and I just want to grab that part before it gets inside of her. She’s so young and sometimes she’s afraid to try new things. Her response is always ‘what if?’ and her little mind goes to what could go wrong if she takes that leap. And it saddens me because I can’t help but wonder if she sees me doing these things. Does she sense that this is how I go through life or is she just being six and she doesn’t understand all of that yet? And when these things happen my mind automatically goes to ‘oh my God, what if she’s like this all her life? What if she’s just like me?’. And a panic sets in within me and I can’t see passed the fear and the negativity sets in and this anger puts its hooks into me and doesn’t let go and I instantly get so mad at myself for not being able to see passed the fear. I have to learn to take a step back, breathe a little, and realize that instead of worrying that my daughter might be like me I have to find positive ways to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know my flaws, I acknowledge them all of the time. And I know how to change them but I’m always stuck somewhere in the middle of who I am and who I want to be.

Everyone looks at the negative side of things sometimes. It’s a natural reaction in certain situations. And I don’t think it’s because we want to, it just happens. At that particular time the negativity is in our face. When something bad happens all we can see is what’s wrong and we can’t see passed it to all of the positive that’s in our life. We focus on the bad because we know that the good will still be there when we’re done. Instead we should focus on the positive to help the bad situations pass faster and easier.

For me, the negativity is so much louder in my head than the positivity. It screams at me. It tears me down so low that sometimes I find it hard to get up. The loudest voices in my head are mean and they drown out any good that might be trying to speak. Looking back at certain times in my life I can see how angry I was but if I look deeper the reality is that I was depressed but I didn’t know it, or maybe I just didn’t want to admit it, so I masked it with anger and that’s all anyone saw. And I would always get the question ‘what are you so mad about?’ but the truth is I couldn’t get passed the negative thoughts and I was hurting, deeply. I was drowning and I couldn’t catch my breath.

For years, even when things were good in my life, I would let the negativity back in like an old friend. It took me a long time to let certain things go, to realize that the past was over, it couldn’t be changed, but I could be. I’ll still dip my toes in negative water but I try not to dive in head first anymore. Because I look back and I see how much time I’ve wasted being negative. It seriously sucks the life out of you. It attacks you mentally, physically and emotionally and it has beaten me in all of those ways. And I’m tired of feeling defeated, feeling beaten down. I need to take control of my emotions and I have to start now, or else I’m never going to do it.

I look around and I see people who are truly miserable. Not because anything has happened to them, but because they choose the negative every day even when they are surrounded by so much positivity. I don’t ever want to be like them. I can’t be. I have to stop myself from going that far into the ocean of misery. I can’t swim and if I ever went there, I know I wouldn’t come back to shore. I refuse to ever be labeled as miserable. That’s not who I want to be. And realistically, with all of the good I have in my life I can’t be miserable, because that would be so disrespectful to the life I have right now.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be the person who always sees the glass as half full, but I no longer want to be the person who always sees it as half empty. I just want to be the person who is thankful that there’s something in my glass. And that something is a husband who loves me, a daughter who makes my world beautiful, a roof over my head, food on my table, clothes on my back and family and friends who light up my world. With all of this in my life there’s no room for negative thoughts anymore. I want to focus on the positive, on the beauty in my life, on all the good that I have and the goals I want to reach.

Next month starts a brand-new year. Not only a new year but a new decade. This last decade had good moments for me and bad moments that I have carried with me further than I should have. I will not take them with me any longer. I have ten new years in front of me. They are shiny and bright and waiting for me to leave my mark on them. They are a clean slate, a fresh start to finally be the person I want to be, to finally stop stalling and write the best chapters of my life. I’m sure I’ll have some bad times, that’s just life. But I plan on making them little footnotes in the chapters that I write. I’m closing the book on my past and starting the journey to write the best story of my life.