Compare and Despair

Last September was a month of positive, fresh starts and the beginning of a lot of cool things in my life. Looking back I'm equally impressed and confused as to how I had so many things going for me. I had just moved into my first apartment, and my best friend was my new awesome roommate. I had a decent-sized group of good friends, and I was dating a guy who treated me like gold. And to top it off, I had just started a new professional “grown-up” job that I was so happy to have gotten.

If I start to compare that to my life at the moment, it is so, so easy to get stuck in a “WOW my life sucks” mindset. I'm currently living in my parents' basement, with just some creepy crawly spiders for roommates. My best friend is my mother, and I haven't been on a date in months. And that dream job? I still work there, but it turns out being the office's “girl who does all the bitch work” isn't quite as fun as I imagined.

Oh, and to make life even more fun, I've been (re)diagnosed with an eating disorder and have been going to therapy/psychology/dietitian sessions for the past few months.

AIN”T LIFE GRAND?

And yeah. There are definitely days when I do do that comparison, and I do get pretty down about it. How did I manage to mess up everything good in my life, in just one year?

Overall though, I feel like everything that is happening right now is happening because it should. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, whether you know that reason or not. To an outsider, my life looks like a mess, but like most circumstances in life, you can choose to you see them as either positive or negative. So I'm choosing to see the positives in this pile of crap life has thrown at me.

Moving back in with my parents has done nothing but good for my health; mentally and physically (and financially). I value my relationships with my parents more than ever. I may have a smaller social group, but it's a pretty good one. Because of my awful job, I'm planning on going back to school to study something I'm truly passionate about. And all that awful therapy? It's been a long time coming, and already it's done wonders to improve my life, health, and happiness.

It's so easy to slip into the negativity and to wish for the past and better times. I could easily be in tears daily, beating myself up about how I ruined everything. But even the biggest mistakes in life can lead to amazing things in the future. Everything happens for a reason, and life gets better. Already I can see hints of better days to come, and it's just a matter of keeping that in mind and staying positive.

Life's pretty cool, even when it's not.