Rerouting, Rerouting

I've come to realize something.

I've been doing a much better job lately at learning how to direct my emotions into something productive.

I feel things very intensely. I always have, and I probably always will. That's just a part of who I am.

But I'm learning how to take those strong, intense emotions and pour them into positive things instead of wasting my mental and emotional energy on negative things that I can't change. It's like I have a Siri, finding an alternative path when she realizes I'm about to drive into a lake. I'm just rerouting my emotions instead of a car.

For example, instead of being caught up feeling devastated or furious about having another friend abandon me over a mistake I made, a friend I never could have predicted I'd be okay with losing, I'm making the choice to focus my love and my heart on the friends who have stuck by me, the ones who have a grasp on what forgiveness means. Really, ever since I started making friends at Campbell, anytime I lost someone, I would get so caught up in that that I would lose sight of the incredible people I still had. That was a disservice to them and, frankly, horribly destructive to my mental health.

I don't get it right all the time. It's definitely a learning process I'm still very much deep in the middle of, but it's a huge improvement over how I have been for a long time. I have so much going on right now that I've accepted that I don't have the capacity to waste brain power, mental strength, or heart on negativity and people and things that ultimately just add more stress to my life.

I guess this is what self-care feels like, huh?