things you learn when bad things come in 3's.

might as well "skip the foreplay" so to speak. things are about to get really deep and mature up in here so i figured i'd crack a lame, immature joke as an appetizer. now that THAT'S out of the way.....
;)

i had one of the worst and most difficult weeks i've had in a LONG time, this past week. EVERYTHING seemed to go completely wrong every which way i turned. things that had seemed steady and constant in my life were getting messy, and miscommunication abounded. the sheer amount of miscommunication made me realize i might seriously need to look into therapy to address how i communicate with people. i felt so completely mis-taken and misunderstood in situations that i thought i was totally alright in.

needless to say, it was disheartening and surprising and a little painful all at once. like getting one of those big birthday cakes that you expect a trio of singing showgirls to pop out of, but instead it's ronald mcdonald with a machete....or something. think about that for a moment. NOT a pretty picture.

anyway....when things like this happened in the past (usually one at a time, but they do say bad things come in 3's....) i used to do the following:

get really inordinately angry and take it out on everyone around me

and,

self-destruct until the situation was so bad, it was out of my life.


yeah....i never claimed to be very sane.

anyway, that's what i USED to do. this week, i certainly got angry. it was my first impulse, like it always is. i let myself get wound up a little....and then something strange happened....

i went to the bookstore and/or drove for hours at a time....and i calmed down.

i know, i know. to normal human beings this might be really anticlimactic and not sound like a very big deal. but probably if you think that, you've never seen me in "angry whirlwind of self-destruction" mode. instead of letting myself get more and more wound up, angrier and angrier, i got in my car and drove. and kept driving. and when i got tired of driving, i went to the bookstore and read for hours. novels i've never picked up before, by authors i'm not familiar with. and the more i read and drove, the more clearly i was able to see my situations. and when i could see them clearly, i began to formulate solutions in my head for each issue.

there was a lot in the things that had gone wrong that i had no control over. normally the idea of that drives me absolutely nuts. but this time around, almost immediately i recalled just a short year ago when i continually had to re-schedule my second surgery because of a bad case of pneumonia. that was easily one of the most trying things i have ever experienced and it taught me a HUGEGIANT lesson: that there is always going to be a lot that you cannot control, but you can ALWAYS choose to control your own reaction to things. it took months of misery and anger with that surgery situation for me to REALLY learn that lesson but....i realized this week that i really had learned it. i hadn't just learned it for that single situation. it's something that really hit me and dug in deep. and when i realized that, everything didn't seem so bad anymore. right away i went to work on the things i knew i could do to solve the issues that were plaguing me and resolved to accept whatever came of the aspects i couldn't control.

and you know what? it was almost easy when i reached that point. i woke up this morning and got right to work on my action plans. for the most part, everything turned out alright. and for what didn't....i felt a real sense of serenity and inner peace. i had done what i could, and i'd resolved to be an adult and a decent human being and that was all i could do. and knowing that i'd done that, that i felt good about how i had handled MY business, was enough to turn my week around. my goal was to end the week in a happy place and guess what?

i have.

maybe my communication skills could use a little work but seriously.....i'm starting to feel like a real live grown-up, and a pretty kickass one at that.