"How am I gonna be an optimist about this?" ~ "Pompeii" (Bastille)
I roll my eyes every time the choir I'm in gets to this lyric in the song "Pompeii" as we prepare for this year's variety show. I mean, it's an internal eye roll because I take performing way too seriously to actually roll my eyes on stage, but still. I can't take the line seriously. You see, optimism isn't really my thing. This isn't for lack of trying. Every so often I try optimism on for size. I dare to hope for the best. I look for the bright sides on the bad days even when I struggle to believe in the overall worth of those silver linings. When I try to be optimistic about the everyday and the mundane, I mostly wind up getting annoyed that I feel as crappy as I did before looking for the positive. And when I try to be optimistic about the big stuff and it falls through? I feel wholly and completely destroyed. I fall off an emotional cliff and struggle to climb back up it. To hope for the best only to be presented with what feels like the worst brings me such an immense, overwhelming amount of pain that I've reached a point where it doesn't feel worth attempting to be optimistic anymore - not when it means risking a level of emotional agony that often takes weeks, if not months, to heal.
Having an anxiety disorder may mean that I'm more prone to imagining every possible worst-case scenario, but my belief in many of those scenarios has been cemented by very real-life experiences. As one of my longest, closest friends pointed out last summer, it's extra hard for me to combat Anxiety Brain because all of the times I've been burned in the past. I struggle to trust people because of all the times that such trust has been betrayed. I struggle to believe that people will stick around because of all the times I've been abandoned. I struggle to think that I'll ever find job stability when I've all but once been laid off after just one year at a school. I struggle to build confidence as a teacher because of all the times I've been told by administrators and colleagues that they think I'm great and that they want to keep me around only to not be hired back when the opportunity presented itself. Even now as a major storm system has moved into my area today, I can't let myself believe even for a moment that it won't turn into another April Snowpocalypse that leads to performance cancellations during show week just like last year. A year ago I was hell bent on believing that the storm wouldn't be that bad and that the show would go on - except the storm was all the levels of bad predicted, and we had to cancel a performance. The disappointment when I got the news left me feeling emotionally devastated. So when meteorologists start likening this year's storm to last year's, I don't dare believe it'll be anything less than another Snowpocalypse that will lead to at least one cancelled performance (and, mind you, the snow has already begun nearly 12 hours ahead of the forecasted schedule).
"Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and you'll come out somewhere in between."
My dad wholeheartedly lives by this philosophy, words that he got from my grandpa (his dad). I know it's a philosophy that I should aspire to according to society and probably most any mental health professional in existence, but it's a philosophy that, most days, I literally want nothing to do with. My philosophy? Plan for the worst and then brace yourself for the emotional impact that the worst will bring. And if the worst doesn't actually happen? I have no problem feeling pleasantly surprised and embracing the joy of my luck when the worst doesn't actually come to pass. But it's so much easier for me to believe that the worst will happen so that it comes as less of a shock to my system in the times that my greatest fears become reality. Does this approach to life mean extra days of worry while I wait to see how troublesome situations pan out? Absolutely. But the extra days of worry are so much easier to handle than the emotional black hole that I fall down when I dare to believe that my hopes and dreams may become reality only to have them squashed like a bug.
"How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"
As fate would have it, the song with these lyrics is the only time I get to stand next to one of my most valued friends in this year's variety show - of course this friend is also one of the biggest examples of an eternal optimist that I have ever known. Standing next to her performing on stage is one of my highlights of the show. Standing next to her while singing those lyrics is decidedly not. As we interact on stage as part of the performance, I struggle to look her in the eye. All I can imagine is her thinking 'How am I going to be an optimist about this? Well, of course I'm going to be an optimist! Why would I be anything else?' while meanwhile I'm standing there thinking 'How am I going to be an optimist? Frankly, I'm not. And I've kind of stopped caring that I'm not." I've decided that the universe has an irritating sense of humor by imposing that awkward juxtaposition on my performing experience this spring.
While that particular friend might be the most significant example of an eternal optimist, most of my other friends in the cast are also bright-side, silver-lining kind of people. A year ago when our friendships had just started to form, I tried to take on their positive outlooks on life. While a piece of that came out of a desire to improve my overall mental health, the truth is that most of my skeptical attempt at optimism was out of fear that if I didn't try to rise to their levels of optimism and positivity, they'd abandon me like I'd been abandoned by so many groups of friends before. I started intentionally looking for the bright sides of bad situations. It wasn't long before the positive spins started to naturally pop into my head. And for a while those silver linings made me feel better. But when I reached my usual winter mental health downward spiral, the attempts at optimism were meaningless at best and infuriating at worst because I felt like I wasn't allowed to feel the very real, very painful emotions that I was experiencing at the time. Eventually I shut out the bright sides the best that I could. They weren't worth the further frustration they caused.
"How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"
The truth is that I'm not, at least not right now. And for now, I'm okay with that. Because coping with mental health disorders sometimes means choosing your battles, and this isn't one that feels worth using the energy to fight right now. Maybe someday when my luck has shifted, when I have more memories of optimism ending in a fulfillment of what I'd hoped for than I do of optimism dropping me off an emotional cliff when things don't work out, I'll give optimism a try again. But for now I'll plan for the worst and emotionally brace myself for the worst to happen - I just can't handle the agony of having to survive another round of picking up the pieces of shattered hopes and dreams after letting myself wholeheartedly believe that there was even a chance for them to become a reality. In the meantime, I have other things that I can work on. For one, trusting that the friends who have managed to stick with me judgement-free through the numerous anxiety and depression black holes that I've spiraled into over the past year will continue to stick with me when I don't strive to match their level of positivity and optimism. Then again, maybe daring to trust that these friends will stand by my side when so many others haven't is an exercise in optimism itself.
