Before I begin, no, this is not a post about Outer Space. Sorry to disappoint all of you Interstellar enthusiasts. Moving on!
I remember the first time that I ever sat in the poorly lit nurse's office at Samuel Staples Elementary School was because I was sent there after I was hysterically crying outside of my third grade classroom. No, it wasn't because my teacher told me that my parents tragically died in a car accident or that I was never allowed to come back to school for some obscure reason. It was because I was caught cheating on a spelling test.
There I was, snotty nosed and hiccuping on a plastic hospital bed. The nurse, Mrs. B, came over and awkwardly rubbed my back and asked if I wanted to talk to my mom. Before she even handed me the phone, I was blubbering to my mom that I was so sorry and that I would never cheat again. My entire school career was over, as far as I was concerned. I would forever be known as the girl who dropped out of school in the third grade because she didn't know how to spell "garbage."
Looking back on that now, the only tears in my eyes are the ones from laughing at how pathetic and dramatic I was. In that moment, it seemed like the biggest deal in the entire world. The regret and pain I felt in that present moment blinded me from seeing that there was any sort of solution or future. I was thinking very small, when in reality, the best way to get through situations like that are to think big, as big as it gets: cosmically.
Thinking cosmically is all about putting yourself in prospect of the universe. We, as humans, are minuscule in this crazy system. When I think about my physical presence on Planet Earth and beyond, I'm humbled by how small I am. Granted, yes, I'm the anti-Shaq at just 5'2", but I'm also talking about how small my problems are. It's important to put things in a broader perspective and take yourself out of the moment. Is the current situation going to help you in the long run? Most likely. When you think about events in a cosmic sense, it's easier to find a silver lining or lesson to be learned.
Just this past week, I found myself in a position not too far from the third-grade scene (luckily, that experience broke my test-cheating habit, though). This time, I was in my dorm bed, face down in my pillow, yelling out a muffled "fu*****ck." I had once again been blown off by a guy I'd been dating for a month-and-a-half. Summer is around the corner, so I expected things to drop off, but I had hoped that we could be a little more decent and avoid the painful "fade out" method.
Also known as the, "hey, I'm busy forever," method. Also known as, "I'm not actually going to be an adult and explicitly break up with you," method.
So there I was, cursing at the world for making me feel like an idiot and for falling into another fade out trap. How do I deal with anything? By feverishly writing about it any trying to make sense of it. The more that I wrote, I realized that this is a tale that has been written so many times in not only my journal, but in probably everyone else's, too. It became clear it that this was such a small issue in my life and I needed to get over it. Fast.
I'm not advertising that suppressing emotions avoiding working through issues is healthy, but when it comes to situations that are already out of ones hands, I've learned that it's best to think about things cosmically. In the grand scheme of things, a short term relationship that was meant to be light and fun is not going to affect my life. I want to live until I'm at least 90 years old, but I won't get there by working myself up over petty issues. I'm sure in 90 days I will have forgotten about all of this, anyway.