Someone else's resolution

The year I let go of the dream
that things would be better,
if only I were a little different.

I saw this in someone else's resolution pile and decided to add it to my list and adopt it as my own. I guess it's just nice to know that sometimes you are not the only crazy one.

I thought a lot this weekend about the differences between men and women. How women overanalyze and men oversimplify. How women obsess and men can zone out. I didn't think about these things because I had to. I'm not going through a crisis. I'm not in the process of having my heart broken. I just decided to look down the line and see things that weren't there for no reason whatsoever. And I had to stop and ask myself why I would do such a thing. Why would I ruin a perfectly good day with something I imagined? Something that hasn't even happened yet?

And then I talked to my roommate and she was doing the same thing, for a slightly different reason, and we both had to stop and ask ourselves why would we do that? Are we genetically programmed? Are we just two crazy peas in a pod?

And then I read this and I kind of realized that this is what I do to myself. In a wierd way, even though I believe otherwise, I always find myself thinking that certain things are not going to happen to me. Not because I don't "deserve" them but because I just think "why me?" So when something potentially good comes along, I find I get swept along with it for a minute or two, only then to begin to sabotage it in my mind. Whereas, if the situation involved someone else besides me, that everything would continue along according to plan.

I have no idea if that makes sense whatsoever but suffice to say that after what was really an awesome weekend, I woke up this morning feeling like someone had died. I allowed myself last night to imagine a future where something bad had happened, and in doing so, actually believed that it would. And that it already did. That is crazy. One of my New Year's resolutions now has to be to stop doing this. To stop ruining today because of what I think might happen tomorrow. I hope I'm not the only person that does this, but since no one else is going to stop doing this for me, I have to stop doing it to myself. I've spent the better part of this morning trying not to throw up from the anxiety of an event that has not shown it's going to occur in any way. That's insane.

The good news is, I'm not the only one guilty of this sort of behavior...clearly the girl who wrote the above resolution is and my roommate too. But that doesn't make it right. And it's certainly not healthy. Getting this out on paper (or screen, as it were) has made the anxiety go away somewhat. I'm finishing my coffee and getting back to work now.