Choosing

I was in the shower this morning and I was replaying a conversation that I had with a friend yesterday.  We were talking about emotions during that conversation.  It was one specific comment that was made during that conversation that was replaying in my mind over and over.  "I am choosing...." 

 Life for me has been crazy.  There is no denying that.   I have been on a roller coaster of emotions and events in life in recent months.  Actually make that statement to say that it's been crazy for the last few years. I am not going to go into it now, I discussed a lot of it in  this post though.  But I will say that life has been a lot in the last few years and it has really gotten to me and I have spent a lot of my time struggling with a low grade (I would say low grade) depression.  It's been going on for years.  In my conversation with my friend I made the comment about how I was struggling way back in 2022 and how I remembered thinking that I should be so happy because I was a newlywed and we had just bought and moved into our house.  Instead I remember days out mowing and working in the yard and crying the whole time as I worried about situations in my life. Little did I know then that it would just get worse.

Some of those situations have been rectified.   The job situation for one.  Being laid off was tough.  (Yeah, remember they did it on my birthday...)  But I think in the long run it is a good thing for me.  It's a relief to have that and some of these other things calm again in my life.

As we talked, my friend carefully probed to see how I was doing with some of the other things going on.   I honestly just started to laugh and say "it's all the same....no change."    She commented that I seemed to be able to handle it better.  I mean, I guess it was obvious as I hadn't erupted into tears when it was brought up in the conversation.   And that is when I made the comment, "The situation hasn't changed but I am choosing to not let it beat me."  

And that is what life is, I just forgot for a while (or just had too much going on to see the forest through the trees).   Life is accepting that you can't control life, you can't control other people, you can't control circumstance.  You can only control your response and how you react and choose to live your life.