Colored Vision

Recently, a teaching friend of mine told me that he or she has had to look at teaching in a different way. Things have changed in the odd 20 years they have taught. He or she realized while they cannot change how students are or are not today, he or she can change his or her outlook on the situation.

Okay, maybe you shouldn’t look at every situation with rose colored glasses.

But maybe he or she was on to something with this idea.

A man steals food at a grocery store. On one hand, he’s a criminal but on the other, he’s starving and needs to eat. Totally basic idea but, there are two ways to see the situation.

A lot of things are changing in my life right now. A lot. Things are surfacing, being realized, and decided in my life.

I have been used to seeing things in a particular shade, for a very long time.

I’m not used to having alone time. As a child I played outside or with siblings in my free time, then read books during my waking moments. High school gave me friends and I spent my time being social, talking on the phone most of the time. Same during college and some after.

I was the social butterfly.

Then, I became ever so slowly more and more stressed. Yes, I do think this had a lot to do with my visual disease and pretending to accept it as nothing- not a problem etc. This I think is where my OCD started to become more than it had been. I moved off campus shortly after my diagnosis and into another stressful situation.

I had less time to just chill with people then. I had to work, I had to get back in school.

I had more time to be alone with my thoughts. Oh the thoughts I had. Obsessive, compulsive, paranoid, lonely, sad thoughts.

I think that I didn’t truly start to be alone with myself until then. I didn’t like myself very much.

I was fat, needy, sloppy, in pain, putting on a show and my thoughts circled like a pack of menacing wolves.

I think I’ve been living with myself a long time now. I am not the person I was in college. I am not.

I love my body (though I do need to put down the Halloween sweets!).

I am beautiful and it’s okay to think so. I am not being stuck up. I’m not being shallow. It’s not dangerous to look pretty.

I am mentally ill but I am not my mother. It is not a death sentence. It is not a predetermined fate of bad parenting.

I do not laugh easily- when I chuckle, it’s to alleviate the tension I perceive is there (even if it’s not). I laughed a lot when I was younger, and it was genuine, truly. Things are different now.

I also realize I am holding the assumption that while I’ve changed, no one else has.

I must change my perceptions. I must realize there are so many things I cannot change. I can control how I love and choose to behave and I can choose to change my perceptions of things.

Only you can decide if something brings you guilt. You can decide how you see someone, something.

So I am going to work on how much power I allow myself to give to others. My feelings, my thoughts, everything are my own.

I am choosing to give myself peace. It’s not gong to be easy. Changing your viewpoint takes time and effort. I am choosing this. I am living with myself now, living with my thoughts and knowing myself.

It’s okay to change. It’s a little scary. It’s okay though.