Fight or Flight

It seems as though I have taken a long enough hiatus from my beloved blog and I am so enthralled to be back on here, unleashing the thoughts in my mind, that I am at a loss of where to begin. I will allow my fingertips to mix with my keyboard and let's see what happens.

In human nature it is often most common to focus on other people's flaws and the negativity in our lives- whether day to day or in the long run, it comes easier to look at things with the half glass empty mentality. I have even noticed myself lacking that so overly positive, confident, and faithful outlook I held on to so tightly. It's not gone, it's just hidden under the busy day to day activities and life of the average 20-something. I am making a conscious effort to get back to where I was with a better ability to self-reflect more often on the things in my life that are going well and those that are not. It seems as though I have been overly emotional towards many things in my life recently, and along with the emotions comes the paranoid, always-expect-the-worst, roller coaster of thoughts. I find it difficult to be challenged, I don't understand some of the newly developed opinions or beliefs of my friends about myself, and I get easily frustrated when I don't have something intellectual to contribute to a conversation. I am still, without a doubt, no matter how hard I try to tell myself it doesn't matter, far too worried about what other people think of me, whether their thoughts have an impact on my life or not. All of these aspects combined have created a patchy fog in my head that rises and lifts and makes my accomplishments and good qualities hard to see and easier to forget.

I have always thought of myself as a fighter. I think you can get away with being a fighter without being strong- plenty of times in my life I have not considered myself as strong as I would have liked but if something was bothering me or hurting me severely enough, I could take my words, perhaps my pen and my paper, and I could fight. I could defend myself. I do not have strong muscles but I have a vast vocabulary which at times can be more important. Lately however, I find myself taking flight. I'd like to think of it as the "spread your wings and fly, take flight, soar higher" type of take flight, but it's not. It's the kind of taking flight that has me squirming in my seat, nervously twirling my hair and reciting the words "I don't know" an uncomfortable amount of times. But why? Why all of this new obsession with the flight of fight response, why the foggy mind and feeling overly cautious about every move I make?

Because things change. People change. People come and go. This is the way I am handling the change in my life, the uncertainty of still wondering what comes next. I will say that throughout the change I am beyond grateful for the friends that are always going to be a part of my life, and I am so overly grateful for the person that has recently made a grand entrance into my life in the last few months. Change is good, I say.

Instead of taking flight and running away from what is bothering me from time to time, I have been trying to connect on a deeper level with myself through reflection and prayer. I believe in the little things in life, in the gifts from the heart, in the power of words. Through these personal beliefs that carry me through each day, I am trying to figure myself out. Everyone has a different perception of things and it is in those differences that the world turns. Otherwise our world would be a bland atmosphere of nothingness and we would have no utopia to imagine in our own creative minds. We would have nothing to work towards, no word to give, no one to trust, no one to love and no one to make love with. Our different personalities are what create war and peace. So it is with those thoughts and my own characteristics that I am trying to dig deeper, while I keep in mind that this is how I was made and this is who I am. So, the next time I take flight, I am going to look down upon what I see below me as I am flying away, as I am fleeing the situation, and I am going to capture that moment and take it in. These are the moments I must fight, perhaps with myself. I must learn. I must open my eyes to new challenges and approach the situation in a new way, with a new attitude. I am trying my best to change how I react when the stimulus is changed and when it is challenging. Change is good, I say.