The Flip Side

I'm not sure if I've written this before but I tend to exaggerate things.  I know this term is generally used in a negative context but I have recently started trying to appreciate the flip side of it as well.  On one hand, I have mini meltdowns weekly--today, for instance, I started crying out of frustration and probably lack of sleep when I realized how heavy my suitcases were and how far I had to drag them around various tube stations on my way home from the airport.  I am a worry-er, a catasrophize-er, a what if?-er.  The minute I hear some horrific tragedy reported in the news I panic--that could be my family, that could be my friends, that horrible thing could happen in my world.  This part of me isn't new--I've  been like this for as long as I can remember.  And it's always bothered me, it's always been a part of myself I wish I could change.  Why couldn't I just brush things off, be calm, cool and collected?  Why did I have to jump from one worry to the next, or think of all of the possible catastrophes that could occur in the far away future or cry when I felt lonely, or overwhelmed, or when I couldn't remember the pin to my debit card, or when I felt like I couldn't carry my suitcases up the stairs?

Some of these things are changeable and I have been working on being less stressed and less overwhelmed and more calm while entering my mid-20s, with the help of great friends who are willing to share good advice.  But what I was missing out while worrying about all of the worrying I did was the flip side.  Yes, I have the capacity to feel utter despair at the drop of a hat and I can exaggerate a situation until I am convinced that everything will go wrong and nothing ever will be good and right and peaceful anymore.  But I also have the capacity to exaggerate what is good in life.  When something brings me joy, it brings me so much fulfilling, total happiness that I don't how other emotions could ever fit.  When I get excited about a party, or meeting a friend for lunch, or reading a good book, or going for a run, or planning a trip, or taking a zumba class, or hearing someone's life stories, or reading a greeting card in the aisle of a grocery store--it is  never a so-so happiness, it is always a so, completely, 100% happiness that fills me from head to toes.

So I have decided, finally in 2012, that you can't have the good without the bad.  Maybe if I didn't have the ability to catastrophize things, I wouldn't have the ability to feel true complete happiness just from skyping with a friend for 10 minutes.  Maybe I'd say "eh, either way".  And I don't want to be like that.

Now I'm definitely not giving up on my crusade to be calm, cool and collected.  I just think that in the midst of trying to change what I don't like about myself, I almost forgot what I did.  And I want to make sure that while I'm collecting myself--while I'm stretching and meditating and visualizing myself into a new me, I don't leave the old me behind.