The Optimist's Problem

I loathed middle school. Nothing in the world will ever convince me that middle school is fun. Fact: middle school sucks. That was a time in my life where I have felt the most alone. I didn't have many friends, and the friends I did have, typically had better things to do than to be around some loner, sad sack. I can say confidently that I cried myself to sleep ninety percent of the time over two years. But if you looked at me or talked to me, you would have never known. I was so good at smiling the cheesiest smile, convincing everyone that I was okay. And here is the thing, I was so good at stuffing all of the thousand of emotions that I had, that every night when I cried, I would break out into hives. I was holding in so much that is was affecting my body physically.

'Why?' Do you ask? Why would I want to disclose that? What is the point?

Being the reader and writer that I am, I feel it is important to always tie a blog post to some book that I've recently read. The book of today's post is "The Optimist's Guide to Letting Go" by Amy E. Reichert. To not give too much away, this book talked about pain. That seems obvious enough for everything else that I've written so far. But the question is what kind of pain? This book talked about the kind of pain that you hold on to. That you tell no one. That you keep hidden in your closet, in the dark, only to be opened on your worst day at midnight. The kind of pain that hurts so much that you push anyone and everyone away, afraid to expose it. Afraid to show how weak you really are.

Here is another fact: When we don't talk about pain, it hurts us more.

"Wow, why the really sad post, A.J.? That's not cool with everything else going on."

I touched on it more in my last post, but it is no revelation that this year has been a suckfest. There are so many people hurting, and it is truly awful to see. Going back to the title of this blog post, I think it is safe to say that generally, we are an optimistic country. I hear the laughter echoing in my head already. But hear me out. After the Civil War, when all of these racial and social problems were considered 'over' we let it go. We pacified as many people as we could, the rest of us sticking our heads in the sand. Okay to hide any kind of pain we were feeling in that deep dark closet. But as everyone knows, or should know anyway, all pain rises back to the surface eventually. That is what is happening now.

Now that all of this pain is exposed, it is so important to keep talking about it, don't stuff it back into that closet. Now is not the time to be an optimist. Now it is time to be a realist. How are we going to change to become better? Personally, I think we've already started doing it. It's time for those confederate monuments to come down. It's time to stop idolizing the past because the past was wrong. It's time for those confederate flags to come down. If we are supposed to be united, there is no point in having two flags anyways. That is just a way to take up space.

If you are uncomfortable with that, then that is probably a good thing. No one is supposed to be comfortable with personal growth. It's necessary that it is uncomfortable for proper change to happen. Now is not the time to cover back over everything and continue being 'optimistic'.

I encourage you to keep going. Keep growing.

Change feels so good.

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