what if it does.

I worry a lot. I create polar extremes out of my contingency planning. I grieve rejection when I anticipate it, I grieve the idea of being rejected before it is even actualised. It’s how I’m wired, I convince myself that it is a coping mechanism: can’t be disappointed if you have no expectations. I take this too far though, I not only have zero expectations, I go the extra mile and manifest failure itself. Worst part is, when I do fail, my math never holds, I am still disappointed, still sad, still angry, still frustrated, sometimes even more so. And honestly, that is human. You can’t prepare yourself to not feel, you can’t force the emotion out in advance, you can’t really do any of that. No matter how prepared you think you are to dismiss the rejection you anticipated, where there is room for hope, even the smallest little air bubble, you will subconsciously start to create expectations, because what if it does work out?

And honestly what if it does? what if you dont have to settle? what if you do get what you want? what if it works out? what if it does?

I never really considered that as a possibility, in every situation that is modelled as a binomial distribution with only two outcomes: failure and success. I only calculate the probability of the former and dwell on how likely it is, how irrefutable its existence is, how I can’t deny it. And although this is true, there is another possibility as well, a possibility that could even be more likely, but a possibility that I dismiss, one that is obscured by a shadow of pessimism, a pessimism that always favours the former while suppressing the likelihood of maybe not failing?

Hold onto that hope, you have nothing to lose if you do, you have more to lose the more time you waste grieving something abstract and assumed. Good things take time, good things are never easy, good things are never guaranteed, good things come when you least expect it, good things are designated when you’re at your lowest, good things take time.