Not an Edit, but a Revisit...

    I'm getting a cold....(I hope it's just a cold)

    Again.

    I immediately started panicking about having to go to the doctor.

    (no insurance=panic)

  It was making for kind of a Debbie-Downer kind of day.... 

Which reminded me of a post that had been nibbling at me: 

Remember my my post about Optimism?  Or, rather, my struggle with Optimism? 

I was not happy with the piece.  I didn't feel like I had articulated my feelings on the issue (my issues). 

From the second I hit "Publish," I was worried that people would read it and think that I was a really negative person....something I'm really not. 

I didn't take the post down, because it was where I was in that moment, and honestly?  I couldn't think of another way I wanted to address the post, so fuck it. 

But then I got an awesome comment of encouragement from my dear friend Andrea...Here's a snippet:

"...I think that if getting you through the day is to prepare for the worst and let optimism fly out the window, then more power to you. Seriously...."

I was so thankful for that.  I responded lengthily right.a-way.

 After reading my response to her comment a few times over, I realized that THAT was what I had been trying to say on the first go...

I was going to attempt to flesh that comment into its own post, but I'm feeling crappy and would rather watch a movie, so I'm just going to paste in (with a little bit of editing because this was originally typed via my iTouch) my response:

[Makes more sense, I think....?]

    "Yeah-Thanks so much for this comment! I really appreciate it. 

It's not optimism as a whole that I have a problem with, it's that 

"forced cheerfulness"  and "fantasyland optimism" that we seem to be forcing ourselves into as a society. 

Nothing is ever allowed to not be okay. 

Any time someone mentions how a portion or a time in life is hard, they are bombarded with reasons as to why it's "not that bad" and why the person should be happy. 

Planning for the possibility of hard times has become a character flaw. 

Acknowledging the toll that hardships take on you/your family has somehow been translated into ungratefulness. 

Rough times are turned into "blessings in disguise", disappointments become "lessons that needed to be learned",  disasters are not disastrous, but a healthy dose of "character-building"--and so on...

While I absolutely believe that you learn from the experiences in life, and need to look for the good in your life-not wallowing in negativity, I think we need to be a bit more realistic with ourselves. With each other.

Sometimes life is hard. 

Really fucking hard, and things don't always work out for the best. 

Most of life not going to just fall together happily in our laps. 

It takes work and planning and honesty about what lies ahead. 

And sometimes, even with all the planning or smiles in the world? 

It's not so positive. 

I wish that that could be talked about without the penalty of the label of Negative Nelly McUnappreciative Pants."

I am not a Negative Nelly McUnappreciative Pants.
But I'm not a Positive Polly McRainbowsandUnicorns Pants, either.

Does that make ANY sense?