As Good As It Gets?

Spending a week in the hospital with nothing to do but think about my life. . . .where it is. . . .and (more importantly) where it's going. . . .has me thinking about that quirky Jack Nicholson/Helen Hunt film. I love that line when he's sitting in the psychiatrist's office looking around at everyone as he's waiting to get his prescription filled and he says to the "oddball" group, What if this is as good as it gets?

Recent events are forcing me to take a deep hard look at who I am and accept what I see on a level that is actually painful. I hated how emotionally fragile my mother was, and the thought that I may actually be more like her as not makes me cringe in horror. So, what does it mean for me to accept that I may be more emotionally "fragile" than the average person? And, perhaps more importantly, to not apologize for it?

Perhaps I do feel more deeply, or am affected more deeply. But does this necessarly have to be a bad thing? Or is it just what it is? I have also had to experience more life challenges than the average person, so these experiences (or more importantly, the journey to heal from them) has given me an emotional strength that I think many people do not have. I'm not afraid to experience "hard" emotions (the way my mother was), and I don't walk around them or try to change them when someone else is feeling them, either. I can "walk through hell" with someone else precisely because I have had to face my own long dark walk through hell. The difference between me and my mother is that I am not permanently incapacitated by my emotions as she was. . . I am compelled to take action because of their power to incapacitate.

I'm about to go through another period of transformation. There is a part of my personal hell that has opened up a portal that I will step through, because I am only just now beginning to understand how my avoidance of this part of my history limits me in some very important ways. And if there is some way for me to work through these blocks, then I will do that hard work, because I'm not yet willing to accept that the current state of affairs is going to be as good as it gets for me.

I will not allow my mother's fate to be my own.

However, there is a price to be paid for liberating my spirit from the power that the expectations of others has held over me and the choices that I make in my life, because by so doing, I am forced to ask for my needs to be met directly by an environment that may be unable or unwilling to do so.

I can't help but wonder, though. . . .what will remain if this environment can not meet my needs?