You Can Be Happy & Dramatic At The Same Time

Do you ever feel like if one thing about your life were different, your life as a whole would improve drastically? It could be anything from your relationship status, to your living situation to your nose, but whatever it is, and no matter how trivial it may seem to people on the outside looking in, it feels like your life is being ruined. Yes, people are dying and starving and battling life threatening diseases, and you know your Netflix & Chill for 1 or roommate 3 IQ points away from being mentally retarded or nose big enough to land a plane on are nothing in comparison, but personally, knowing that I’m being dramatic has rarely gotten in the way of me continuing to be dramatic.

My guess is that whatever’s bothering you is out of your control. Legally speaking, I’m pretty sure you can’t make someone date you. And I don’t think my college would be particularly understanding if my roommate’s belongings were to magically end up in a UHAUL headed across campus. And there’s no way I’m taking the chance of further fucking up my face with plastic surgery.

I wonder all the time what my life would be like if small things were different. Things that seem meaningless in the moment have a strange habit of being a lot more significant than you originally thought they were. On a whim, I took a political class as a freshman fashion major, and am ending my college career as a communications major with a political science minor, working on a presidential campaign and with a worldview that dramatically contrasts the one I came to college with.

How different would my life be if I wasn’t constantly wondering if I would ever get the relationship I think I deserve, or if I could live with someone that I didn’t want to strangle, or if I was consistently confident in the way I look.

I don’t think it’s always productive to tell people to just “not think about” or “get over” the things that upset them. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for encouraging someone to grow a pair, but if it was something that they could simply ignore, they probably wouldn’t be so affected in the first place.

I’m learning that the best practice in these situations may be to acknowledge and own your emotions, then work around them. Yes, I’m single and super pissed about having no one to do cute Christmas things with. Yes, I’d like it if I lived with someone I had more in common with. Yes, sometimes I wish that my DNA had mixed slightly differently. But I have plenty of friends to do cute Christmas things with, and most of them are just as willing to pour whiskey in hot chocolate as I am. And two out of three of my roommates are the cheddar and butter to my biscuit. And my nose is big, but I’m still super good looking.

Obviously, you shouldn’t waste your time being upset about things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but at the end of the day you feel how you feel. You can accept things and get over things in your own time, but in the meantime, make the best of your circumstances. There’s no point on focusing on how much better things could be if you don’t appreciate how good things already are.