Why It Can Be Scary When Things Start Going Right

As awful as rock bottom can be, there’s something comforting about being as low as you can go (and I don’t mean low in the sense Flo Rida does). Rock bottom means things can’t get worse. It means you don’t have any expectations. It gives you a degree of consistency. In short, rock bottom is your safety net – it gives you something familiar to fall back into if you lose your grip when you’re trying to claw your way out of lumps of crap that have piled up on top of you.

So it can be quite overwhelming when everything in your life starts going right. Suddenly, everything is uncertain. You start imposing high standards on yourself and your life. Congratulations, you now have a butt load of great stuff to lose. I am aware that when good things happen, you should be grateful. But still, when life starts getting good there’s a nagging in the pit of my stomach shaking up my insides – I’m terrified. When is the rubber band going to snap?

When everything starts going right, the stakes are HIGH and REAL. You begin to have things that you have wanted so badly for so long you hardly know how to cope. If you hold on too tight, you will squeeze them through the cracks in your fingers and back into the atmosphere from which they magically materialized? And if you loosen your grip, they might simply just float away? WHAT IS THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF PRESSURE TO APPLY? Moreover, what if you do something devastatingly characteristic and screw it all up irreparably? That seems to be more likely.

I suppose now after this brief, frivolous rant, there is only one thing to be done. Eat cake. Okay, okay…so there’s two things to be done. Once the cake is gone, it’s time to put on some big girl panties and take a deep breath. A deep breath that says, “You’re being ridiculous.” Because even though you’re all but paralyzed with fear, you’re now complaining about having all the things you spent so long complaining about not having. And that’s so illogical you’re risking ripping a wormhole in the fabric of the time space continuum and exploding your brain into it. So go forth boldly.

Don’t sabotage what you have because you’re afraid of losing it.

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