Something happened during #reverb15.

I let go.

I let go of a lot of anger and resentment I had been harboring over a life situation I can’t change. I let go of a relationship that let go of me long ago. I let go of the fear I had of being seen as a fraud by the fitness community for not being a size 6 and for struggling with an eating disorder.

Ok, maybe I still fear judgement from the fitness community over my size, but I’ve acknowledged it and I am working on it.

That’s a lot of positive change in one month. Certainly a lot for a chick who is a self proclaimed change-hater. Perhaps that’s just one more positive that came out of December: Change doesn’t seem so bad anymore.

I have spent my entire adulthood defining myself with absolutes.

“I’ll never move.”

“I don’t like animals.”

“I’m not an adventuresome eater.”

“BodyJam. God. Family.”

“I hate change.”

Those statements feel suffocating now. SUFFOCATING. Change sounds like freedom from these boxes I’ve placed around myself.

Feeling Feels

I’d be remiss not to mention my friend and fellow blogger, KayShay at authentistic.com  because I’ve already touched on several of her last few posts. I am so glad she is writing them now and I am reading them now, as in, this moment in my life. Even just two months ago, I didn’t have enough space in my mind to really hear the questions she’s posing and be able to have my own authentic answers to them. There was too much anger and resentment and pain and loss and frustration in the way.

I’ll be posting in more detail about these questions, specifically about the ways I have defined myself that I no longer wish to be stifled by. (Such as “I am not a person who ends a sentence with a preposition.” However, I am still a person who considers herself a decent writer and just spent 20 minutes coming up with different ways to word that sentence that did NOT include ending it with a preposition only to decide to leave the first crappy sentence because without the crappy sentence there’s no joke about being a person who ends a sentence with a preposition).

This “letting go” thing is not perfect. I find doubt creeping back into my decisions. I have moments of crushing sadness over the loss of someone close to me. I feel rage bubbling up over issues at work. Yes, rage. I feel feel feel all the time. All the feels.

I think, though, that I am finally starting to learn what to do with all the feels. I’m learning that controlling the expression of my feelings is not the same thing as ignoring them and that emotionally healthy people do not fly off the handle – happily or angrily or sadly.

Learning how to deal with my feelings allows me to eventually let go of the negative ones. I’ve never been very good at that.

I feel (there’s that word again) like a cloud lifted in December. I feel like what’s real and true and important became so much clearer.

I feel like maybe I’m ready to be happy.

My One and Only Resolution for 2016.

Practice happiness.

It is a skill I lost somewhere along the way and I’m excited and motivated to get it back. I even downloaded an app. No kidding. Maybe you’ve seen it advertised on Facebook. It’s called Happify. Maybe you haven’t because you’re not the Debbie Downer even Facebook realized I’ve become and then capitalized on. (Damn it. Preposition).

Regardless, it’s an app to literally practice being happy. There are games and activities. Last night I played the Happify version of Duck Hunt where balloons float up on the screen with words on them and you have to click the positive words to get points. I think they subtract points if you accidentally click a negative word. I don’t know for sure because I had a perfect game. #notcompetitiveatall 😉

I am reading The Happiness Project by Gretchin Rubin and beginning to write down positive moments each day. I can’t believe how quickly my mindset is changing. My initial reactions are calmer. I remember to choose to be happy instead of allowing spite and anger to take over immediately. It’s only midway through January and I can feel the shift happening.

2015 was a craptastic year, but I wonder how much worse I made it with my negative mindset. No matter because it is over now and I am moving onward and upward to 2016: The year I decided to be happy.