What If It Doesn’t All Work Out?

A new year, a new journal…

I’m a sucker for writing utensils – notebooks, journals, different colored gel pens, highlighters, Post-It notes, index cards, and Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine pens in blue and purple. I love going on a field trip to Office Depot or Staples to check out all of the shiny new items. Martha Stewart’s line of organizational products has me swooning and I once purchased a 100 pack of gel pens from Costco. (FYI, flesh colored gel pens are not good on white paper, but you can sell 20 unused or unusual colors at a garage sale and make back most of your initial investment).

My newest journal is from the Knock Knock line aptly named It’s Gonna Be Okay. Actually, the official title is much longer:

It’s Gonna Be Okay

A journal to reassure myself when I’m overwhelmed by the creeping sense of impending disaster and the all-encompassing fears both specified and vague that colonize my mind, body, and soul, all of which, from the completely far-fetched to the sometimes probable, do me no good to contemplate and in fact make me miserable, and even though optimism may be unself-aware and ill-placed, I know I’ll be happier as a blind fool than as a clairvoyant apocalyptic.

How can one pass up a journal like that?

One of the quotes within sums up life very well. 

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. ~ Anne Bradstreet

So what if it doesn’t all work out? That’s the question I pondered today as I cleaned up the back porch (yuck to vacuuming bugs) and rearranged the workout area (a pretty intense workout in its own right). Really, what’s the worst that can happen?

Here it is, in black and white, my worst-case scenario… and I’m not talking about the kids all dying in a freak accident.  I’m talking relationship stuff, the stuff that I’ve been wrestling with over the past two years….

I could never find love again and could end up dying alone.

That’s the Big Fear, but at its base, it’s my fear of abandonment, the one that was ground into me during childhood. If you knew my back story, you’d know where this came from, you’d understand why I feel I have to prove my love worthiness. I own it. I recognize it. I know it motivates me.

But it doesn’t motivate me enough to jump into a relationship with just anyone, so I guess it’s not as powerful of an issue as originally thought.  I don’t like men just because they like me. Hmmmmmm…..

That’s it. Just the one big, bad outcome. I don’t fear other things because I know I can handle them. Lose a job? Be unemployed for almost a year? Struggle financially? Been there, done that.

In my brain I know that finding love again is highly probable. It will just take effort, like any worthy goal. The old ways won’t cut it anymore and using new technology will most likely be the path to success, but it is possible.

And the dying alone thing? I won’t die alone, even if I’m not married. I’ll find a Golden Girls situation (please let me be Blanche). Or more realistically, probably end up living with one of the kids, in some sort of in-law area of their house, and be connected to the other ones through Skype or teleporting or brain-linking… whatever the kids are doing for texting in the future. But moving in with one of them will be a while away, after I finish sowing my wild oats, of course.

Thank God I’ve still got a sense of humor. It will help to draw attention away from the new wrinkles around my eyes.

Maybe I can find a nice man with bad vision and a good pension who likes to eat whatever crazy recipe I’m putting together that day. And he must like binging on Netflix because the next season of House of Cards is coming out soon.