Thursday, May 12, 2016

Lists of 4

Life is cyclical. It is known. For me, the cycle goes like this: everything falls into place, and then something happens. A misstep. And then the universe starts to pull at that misstep, like a set of fingers pulling at an errant end of  a piece of yarn on a sweater. And life starts to unravel.

At least it feels that way. Depression and anxiety take over, and every new misstep is exaggerated. It feels like life will never get back to the way it was.

And then the unraveling slows. And then it stops. And then you patch things up and feel whole again. For a while, anyway.

It seems like every time the unraveling slows, when life is close to falling back into place, I return to writing. I don't have any breakthroughs to share, but I like to set intentions. And I love lists. Here's a list of things that led to life falling into place:

1. E proposed and I said yes. We're planning a wedding! We're exited! And scared!
2. I got a fantastic annual review at work, and a very decent raise.
3. E and I made the decision to buy a house!
4. I stopped living paycheck to paycheck.

And then slowly, things started to turn.

1. Planning a wedding and managing everyone's FEEEEELINGS. This was very stressful starting out. Very stressful. Very, very, cry-every-day, feel-like-a-failure, plan-an-elopement, cry-some-more stressful.
2. My work engagement gave me more responsibility without much help or direction. Obviously I won't go into detail, but the last 8 months have been the most challenging of my entire professional career.
3. House buying sounds like so much fun! In theory! In reality, it is THE WORST. We've put in offers for over 20 houses. The market is insane in Atlanta right now, and folks are getting 15-20 offers and generally selling well over asking price. We're under contract right now, and I *think* we are finally on track to get a house, but the last two were so disheartening. They really illustrated the dark underbelly of humanity sellers.
4. E and I were in a car accident a week ago today and my car was totaled.

Life is hard, but it's turning around. There are actually some really great positives coming out of these negative situations.

1. E and I are learning a lot more about each other, and I really think we're bonding over the wedding planning. And honestly, now that we have a budget and a space and a date and have talked with our parents about our expectations, it's gotten a lot better.
2. The difficulty at work hasn't gone unnoticed, and good things may be headed my way.
3. The two other houses falling through led us to the house we're buying now - a house that is well within our budget that we can customize to our needs.
4. My insurance is covering the rest of my loan for my car - so no more car payments! Until I buy a new car. But E and I are buying the car and covering the expenses together.

So, I don't know. I started this post with the intention of writing down some things I want to focus on, heading into summer, but I guess I'll save that for another day. Today I'm just happy to say that things are turning around.