I’m waiting to hear back about the you know what. This is when I get that ever-hardening knot in my stomach, when every nerve and muscle in my body goes tense in expectation of bad news. Waiting, for the hammer to drop or for sweet relief.
Everyone thinks I worry too much, but I’m superstitious in how I worry. I believe it is better to expect the worst and receive it than to expect the best and receive the worst anyway. I’d rather go through the agony a million times in anticipation than once in actuality unprepared. I’ve always been this way. It’s what I do. My mind becomes like a wild thing gnawing.
It is in times like these that I’m glad I have friends. People who place sandbags against the emotional storms. My friends. The ones who have been here before to ease some of the burden and who recite their familiar and powerful incantations of hope and optimism, keeping the vigil with me. The ones who know that I’m not as confident or untouchable as I try to make it seem to the rest of the world.
This is the perfect opportunity for quotations!
- “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” — Horace
- “In all things it is better to hope than to despair.” — Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
- “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” — Joe Louis
- “There are no laurels in life…just new challenges. ” — Katharine Hepburn
Hang in there, goofball.