Posted by Dinah on April 4, 2009, at 15:07:44
In reply to Re: Is this as good as it gets?, posted by SLS on April 4, 2009, at 8:38:28
Note that I am pragmatic to my toes. Which works fine for me, but maybe not so well for others.
In tenth grade, for probably less than a year, and twelfth grade, for a probably a bit more than a year, I was taken over by an alien that my therapist and I call "Happy Dinah". I loved being Happy Dinah. It was the best days of my life by a long shot. Every once in a blue moon, Happy Dinah returns. But the other closer to fifty years of my life that I'd like to recall where lived by regular old Dinah. Who is not by nature particularly happy.
If I were told that it was possible to get Happy Dinah back, I'd jump at the chance. I was smart and funny and a bit popular, and my husband and a friend I've kept in touch with from that time freely admit I was prettier those two years too. But not eleventh grade. Go figure. I was enormously efficient. My concentration was great. I wasn't manic, and I wasn't depressed.
But I can't wait to live my life until Happy Dinah returns. I can't put my life on hold. I have to make the best of the me I am. I may never see Happy Dinah again, or I might. I hope I will. But in order to make the most of my life on this day in this time with regular old Dinah in charge, I can't look back at Happy Dinah. I can't even look back on superdepressed postpartum Dinah or slightly nuts adolescent Dinah. I am who I am today. It may not be "good enough". Goodness knows I could certainly aim for more. But it's what I have. At this moment. For this day. It's what I have. I need to make the most of who I am today.
I might try to be better than who I am today. But that needs to remain separate.
For me.
For you it might be different. But that's how it works for me.
poster:Dinah
thread:888216
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20090328/msgs/888676.html