I awoke with a start. A stunning realization came to me in my dreams and now my subconscious was forcing it to the front of my consciousness. My God! What the hell has happened to me? I’ve become one of THEM.

Who would that be you ask? A member of the new Tea Party? No, nothing nearly as frightening or severe as that.

I’ve become a type of person I’d always vowed to avoid becoming. Debbie Downer. Peggy Pessimist. Eeyore. I’ve devolved from a confident, well-adjusted (relatively speaking of course) adult to a paranoid, neurotic, pessimistic pill. I may not show the mood every day, but most days, it’s there, hovering in the shadows, waiting to pounce on me the second I start to feel good about myself or things that are going on in my life. I feel like people avoid me, averting their eyes as they go by in the hopes that I’ll just keep walking. I might get a hello, but I don’t get a lot of “How you doing?” anymore. I’m being shunned. See, there’s that paranoia thing again.

Most people who know me well would agree that I’ve never been the super cheery type that you often want to smack when they offer you one of their high-pitched, bouncy greetings. You know the type. I’m reserved in most situations, but am much more open with people I know well. New acquaintances often take my shyness for either snobbery or indifference. Neither is true. I’m just not one to go and introduce myself to everyone in the room. But this “new” me is something far different, far worse. Almost like my body has been hijacked by some virus hell-bent on hijacking my personality for good. A little like Jekyll and Hyde, except without the murderous tendencies. So lately I’ve been asking myself, “What are you going to do to get out of this?”

I wish I had a good answer to that. In theory, I know what needs to happen. It’s the practice that gets me. Telling myself that I’m better off than a lot of people doesn’t really help some days. I’ve worked my ass off for two college degrees, yet I’m not really able to use either of them. I work in the tech industry as a programmer and system administrator for a university, but my pay really sucks for what I do. Sucks even more since they furloughed all of us. So, I’m broke and each month wonder if I’ll have enough to pay the bills. My partner just got a new job as a test scorer, and has work lined up for the summer, but it still may not be enough for us to be “comfortable,” which in our case would be having a little left over to actually go do something once a month. My mom is fighting cancer. My partner’s parents are both in poor health. And the last few years have been extraordinarily challenging and difficult. And I’m exhausted from all of it.

So, what? Everyone is having a tough time right now, right? Yeah, I get that. “If you think something bad is going to happen, it probably will.” The whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing isn’t lost on me. I just have a hard time getting away from it. Is pessimism my new addiction? Perhaps. I’d like to go back to looking on the bright side of things. I think it needs to become a daily ritual for it to really stick. Wake up and think about one good thing that’s going on or that I can do differently to make things better. End the day thinking about the good things that happened. Maybe I’ll sleep better. Most nights, my mind migrates to worrying about pretty much anything and everything, which leads to me not sleeping well. I can’t erase what’s happened in the past. I guess I should find the life lessons from those events and chalk it all up to experience. Some of my friends have joked that at least I still have my sense of humor considering everything that has gone on. Yep, it’s still there. It just doesn’t make appearances often enough.

Now it’s time to evolve again, back to being well –adjusted and less neurotic. Back to smiling and finding joy in simple things. Away from being Eeyore and being shunned wherever I go. That’s not to say I’m going to become one of those people you want to smack because they’re too cheery. If that happened, I’d be hitting myself all the time and then I’d just get weird looks for other reasons.