Whew! Glad That's Over!

Though it’s only drizzling rain at the moment, the scene outside takes me right back to what I was dealing with during the last three months. I found myself asking the question, “When will the sun come back out?” because all I could think was that I may never feel its rays shine down on me again due to the pouring Whackitis and sopping drama.
That’s what we get when we beg for change, folks. We complain when we’re in the desert and we freak out while experiencing the massive precipitation we longed for. What we really want is a perfect sunny day, 65-70 degrees, clear skies and a soft breeze to shelter us from disappointment. Unfortunately for us dreamers, myself included, the reality consists of the following:

There will be dry days
There will be wet days
There will be days when God throws us a bone
There’s no such thing as perfect

If you’re just now getting to this place, welcome to my world. It’s up, it’s down and it can provide the most splendid of experiences once you learn to adapt. Yeah, adapting to disappointment seems to be the appropriate theme for today. So let me give you a tour of the room I’ve named Cristin’s Self-Inflicted Path to Destruction…

At first glance it’s a beautiful sight. The walls are painted with amazing earth tones and pictures that sparkle with love, success and true happiness. The bed seems firm, soft and comfortable so you feel like you can breathe easily, relax and sleep well at night. The furniture is antique. It carries historical imprints, but has also been refinished to reflect your current personal taste. It’s everything you’ve manifested and more. Essentially, this is the room of your dreams and you say to yourself, “Ahh. I could stay here forever.”

Then BAM!

You wake up a few months later to realize that your fantastic room of splendor has crumbled into something you don’t recognize any longer. The walls have blackened and the artwork that displayed such stunning pictures are now dingy with messages of boredom, stagnation and lethargy. That bed has sunken into its coils, not allowing relaxation or a full nights sleep because all you can think about are the negative aspects of your room. Those historical imprints from the furniture you once saw as the unique side of yourself have come to the surface. They’re haunting, taunting and cause you to sabotage your path to greatness. You ask yourself, “How did this happen to me? How could I allow myself to believe such a fairtale would last?”

Unfortunately for myself, I have the answer to those questions. It didn’t just happen. It was easy to let the laundry pile up in one corner and allow the garbage to stink up another. I’m sure you thought, “I need to clean today”, but left it for tomorrow. When tomorrow came, you repeated without rinsing. Most likely, you burned too many candles at once, thinking the walls could take care of themselves. The novelty wore off and you started to lose sight of what that room represented and how much it meant to you. You didn’t think you were doing too much, but you never took the time to care for what was most important to you…the room you once called a luxurious paradise.

That room is YOU and/or your relationship(s). Your mind, body and spirit have been drained and your surroundings reflect that. Well, let me just tell you that you’re not alone in this situation. Everyone I’ve ever known has been to this place, most commonly in their romantic relationships. When you first get into it, everything is wonderful. There are no flaws with your partner or with yourself. As time marches on and things progress, you allow this person’s garbage and quite possibly your own to stink up the area. This has caused you to enter into reaction mode. Now everything seems incredibly dark, dirty and borderline disgusting. Needless to say, you’re terribly disappointed and don’t know how to restore the room to its former glory.

Now you’re thinking, “Oh man, I can’t do this. It’s way too much work!” Well, the way I see it, you have two options. You can give up, walk away and create another room with upgrades or you can take a good look around, extract all the garbage and adjust your expectations from fantasy to reality. I believe the latter may be the best path to take if you believe that room is worth something money cannot buy. Yeah it’ll take a bit of work and you will probably have a fight on your hands, but it could be worth it, right?

Reality can appear to be cruel, but it can also save you from yourself. A beautiful and peaceful room has to be maintained if you want it to have longevity. The same goes for our relationships. Yeah there will be some concessions. You will probably have to do some work that makes you want to crawl under a rock and never see the light of day again. Most likely, you’ll have a lot of stinky garbage to handle that makes you sick. Sure you’re disappointed that you couldn’t just live in luxury without doing any maintenance, but if you allow yourself to adapt to the situation, you will find this huge silver lining you overlooked when you first entered the room.

Just so you know, I lived in this room for approximately three months. I started noticing the negativity in my life about a month and a half into it. I tried to turn the tide verbally, but that didn’t work so I adapted to the disappointments and changed my behavior. I did sound the warning alarm and once my actions became consistent, that room started to shine again. The sun popped out when I least expected it to. I’m seeing what I want to see and getting what I need for now. Only time will tell if my part of the mantenance will allow my desires for myself and the situation to come to fruition. It was difficult work but now I say to myself, “Whew! Glad that’s over.”

So you guys, if you find yourself in that dark, dirty and borderline disgusting room, (Insert name)’s Self-Inflicted Path to Destruction, just know that you have options to find your way back into the sun. Adapting to disappointment sucks big time, but there’s a lot to be learned in the process. Once you find a way to view the situation from a spiritual perspective, the sky is the limit for what you can achieve.