Negativity: A Virus

It’s been a hard year... for everyone I know.

Each year for the past several, I have approached the moment when the ball drops in Times Square with a sense of relief… a “Thank God that’s over” sense of relief. Inherent in that relief is the hope that the next year will be better. 2013 ended horribly for us here in Newtown and I clung to the belief that things could not get worse, ergo they would have to get better. But, instead of opening myself up to the possibility of improvement, I wrapped my heart up in a box and waited. I dared the universe to change. I challenged God to fix it and, since I no longer believed in God as a savior or even someone who was listening, I descended into anger, my sense of hopelessness for the world vindicated. Sickness followed. I’d have a good week here and there but, mostly, I was miserable. I jumped from one doctor to another, one antibiotic to another, one symptom after another, through May. My frame of mind could not have been helping.

When you cut yourself off from the possibility of improvement, you lock yourself into proving that you are right. Three season later I am just starting to lift the lid of the box to see what I have cut myself off from: friends, causes, any sense of well-being. It’s time for a change.

My age old pattern has been to burn all the bridges, cut, run and start over someplace else. In the past I have moved, changed my name, my job, my friends, my activities… I am pondering a new beginning. I am on the precipice of choosing. But, even as I contemplate the alternatives, I wonder, might I not be able to do that right here?