What to expect when you’re expecting…anything

Sometimes you just feel so empty that you have to escape your body, look at yourself, and laugh at yourself for how empty you feel.

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“i enjoying mysekf by the lake, but then i remembered instances of regret in my life, and pain i have caused others” — @bakkooonn

Expectations are a b*tch, aren’t they?

You have expectations for how your life will go and they’ll never materialize. You have expectations for how relationships will turn out and you wind up in divorce court arguing over just how few of the wedding gifts you’ll get to enjoy in your studio apartment.

no room for the breadmaker

With anxiety comes that small, shouting voice in your head saying “IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. IT’S GOING TO FALL APART AND BE A HOUSE OF CARDS AND YOU’RE GOING TO BE A LAUGHABLE EMBARASSMENT”. Normally this should be a voice of reasonable doubt, but the doubts are never reasonable because the expectations are never reasonable. You live on the edge of possibility forcing something to work because you want it to, deluded that desire is the only thing keeping you from the true thing you want.

But is it really ever what you want?

Is it what you think others want for you?

Do we know what we want?

Or are we just boundless electrons, hovering full of negative charge around a nucleus more immense than we could ever imagine and sparked with pure imagination?

Imagination helps you get through difficult times in the short term. It’s a safe place to escape to, a place where everything goes right when everything around you is going wrong.

In the long term it’s toxic, separating you from reality like an astronaut unmoored from the shuttle.

You’ll rewrite history, you’ll insert how you wish things went in place of how you see them going, you’ll cling to the good times and kick dust over the failures.

You’ll tear out every nerve ending in hopes to not feel it anymore, not feel you kicking the living crap out of your bruised and battered limp body for having expectations only to lose them.

I wish I could end with a thumbs up and a Colgate smile and say to have no expectations and that life will be wonderful.

for god’s sake of all the countries you could’ve asked to smile…

Because you won’t.

I won’t.

We’ll imagine and we’ll expect and we’ll set ourselves up for fantastic disappointment.

The only thing we can do is strap ourselves in for next time and relish that rollercoaster as part of being alive.

don’t worry, only one person’s been killed on thunder mountain!

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