Obsession

Something happened several weeks ago (can I really say something happened or should it be instead that I participated willingly and knowingly in something?) that, at the time, I thought wouldn't affect me. Something I thought I could distance myself from, because usually, that's what I do. I'm good at it. Typically, distance is something I prefer; I feel it keeps me safe (or more safe than usual). Whether it actually does or not, I have no idea, but that's how it makes me feel.

Anyway, there seems to be a by-product of this 'thing' hanging around in my head. It's something I never would have ever considered. If someone had told me before hand that this would come to matter to me, I'd have said they were crazy. But now, I feel like it's consuming me. Every available thought I have is devoted to it.

I worry about obsession. About obsessing. I don't know how many other people do it, but I am constantly playing things out in my head. Dozens of scenarios clouding my judgement, impairing my ability to separate the reality of what is actually going on from the fictitious worlds in my head. I'm so consumed with trying to figure out the future, and sometimes I believe one of the worlds I've imagined might be it, I set myself up for disappointment. And the problem is I've made big decisions from the imaginary world I've created and then have to come back down to present reality and face it.

I've gotten better over the years about living outside my fantasies. I still have them, but I'm better at giving them up and recognizing them for what they are. But this time, it would be so easy to give in. And I want to so badly. I have no idea how it could turn out, and would fully expect it to go completely against me, but I feel like this is an opportunity to really open myself up exceptional disappointment. Something I usually guard myself against. I think it's important to be so fantastically let down a few times in life. I think most people are blind-sided by it, but here I am, prepping myself to walk face first into disaster.

I recognize this may be the wrong decision. I accept that it may not, and probably will not, go my way, but I can't have this pounding away inside my head indefinitely. I feel like my skull's cracking from the inside out while I obsess over it.

I don't know. I don't know if there is a right or wrong answer. Or an answer at all. I suppose the best I can do is plow ahead and hope for the best even if the worst should come.