"I'm so happy and excited about the big changes in my life."
Something I will never say.
I used to think of myself as a happy, easy to please, easy going person. (Yes, Mum, you may laugh now.) Ok, I'm pretty sanguine. I'm a people person, generally happy in disposition. But not easy going. I don't like things to change.
If I'm happy where I am, don't move me.
Unfortunately, life... doesn't work that way. Life moves you. Shoves, pulls, pushes, kicks, and occasionally turns you inside out. It's like playing musical chairs. Non-stop. For the rest of your life. You plod along, around and around the chairs, while music plays in the background. Then the music stops and you frantically fight everyone for a seat. You try to survive the sudden jolt by finding a safe place to sit it out until the music (usually a different tune) starts up again. You find a new pace, a new pattern, but it's all new. And alarmingly temporary.
Maybe it's my particular age, but life is so up in the air right now. I have a full time job that would basically cover food expenses if I were to have to leave home. No housing, car, utilities... just food. Just barely. I moved away from 95% of my friends and the other 5% are in the process of moving away from me. My best friend... well, that's another story. Let's just say I feel very alone right now. And like is so often said, you don't know what you've got til it's gone. (don't freak out, he's not dead or anything. just... very... distant...) Even spiritually, things are in adjustment. I don't have a chapel within a two minute walk with Sacraments available every couple of hours and Jesus available during all waking hours. I can get to Mass once a week. I should count my blessings... but right now they seem to be significantly fewer than they have been.
And I have been assured, over and over again, that this is a phase. A particular transition period. That things will fall into place. But that doesn't make it feel good. At all. Unfortunately, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I try to at least look happy, but even the absent-minded guy at work offered to buy me a huge bar of chocolate after taking a look at my face the other day.
My phlegmatic side (which I didn't know I had until about April) is unhappy. I was happy where I was. Then they made me graduate. How unreasonable of them. Learning to be happy in a completely new situation (like completely new) is harder than it appears.
In the meantime, I'm trying to take Fr. Buckley's advice: look to the future with hope. And practice smiling in front of a mirror in the meantime.
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