Don't be disappointed, but this post is all about disappointment. This is not normally a topic I care to discuss at great length; however, I was killing time in the dentist office the other day (damn sensitive teeth) and I happened to read an article about disappointment in Reader's Digest (who knew Reader's Digest was still a thing?). It was written by an 80-year-old woman who was proclaiming that she would no longer tolerate disappointment in her life. She wasn't saying that she was going to rise above disappointment and carry on. She was saying that she no longer wanted to hear or experience anything that would cause her to be disappointed. Is that even possible? I suppose so if you isolated yourself from every other person on the planet; never watched television; never looked at the internet or social media; never read a book, newspaper, magazine or the Reader's Digest for that matter. That's not terribly realistic now is it??? The fact of the matter is that you are going to be disappointed during the course of living your life. Hell, you're probably going to be disappointed a lot, a real, real lot so what do you do about that???? Pay attention because I'm fixin' to save you a ton of money on therapy bills. Basically you just gotta suck it up, buttercup. Yep, that's about the long and short of it. Nothing too earth shattering about that. I get disappointed; you get disappointed; we all get disappointed, but we don't all handle disappointment the same way. That's the more interesting topic for me. How do you deal with the D word? Do you go jogging and sweat it out? Do you reach for the bottle and drink it out? Do you stick your face in a tub of double fudge chocolate ice cream and eat it out? Do you pick up your cell phone, call a friend and talk it out? Maybe you do all of the above (not at the same time). The point is you DO something about it unless you are that 80-year-old woman in the Reader's Digest article. I realize that some of you might not be able to DO anything because you're depressed. I know a thing or three about that D word also. Been there, done that. I sought help at the time in the form of talk therapy and Lexapro. I wish I could say that combo did the trick, but in all honesty double fudge chocolate ice cream and the occasional menthol Virginia Slim was just as effective. Hey, I never said I was all that healthy physically or mentally ... don't judge. Anyhoo, I made it through to the other side of depression which for me has been a feeling of pure, unbridled joy in the simple act of living. UGH. That sounds so sweet it makes my sensitive teeth hurt. Of course, I still experience disappointment but that's just part of the human experience. I'm also a weirdo because I have the uncanny ability to be disappointed in the most asinine things. I've always had this ability from a very young age. Here's a list of the top ten dumbest things, off the top of my head, that disappoint me. You all know I love my top ten lists, so here goes: 10. I was not born into royalty. How is that possible? 9. I'm not a grandmother yet (hint, hint) even though I have all the grandmotherly attributes. 8. I cannot sing like Barbra Striesand. 7. Donny Osmond did not ask me to marry him. Neither did David Cassidy for that matter. 6. I never finished college because apparently you can't major in cutting class. 5. Matt Dillon never made an honest woman out of Kitty on Gunsmoke. 4. As much as I love my two boys; I would've loved to have also had a girl.
It's too late now because menopause. 3. That perm I got my senior of high school. Shudder. 2. I did not get over myself earlier in life. 1. This top ten list. See, I told you I'm a weirdo. Speaking of weirdos, have you heard about the group of old, Russian women who refused to leave their homes in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster? http://www.more.com/chernobyl-women-nuclear-holly-morris Click on the link and you can read about these amazing ladies. They are all approximately the same age as the lady in the Reader's Digest article; however, that's where the similarity ends because the Russian women didn't ban disappointment from their lives. What did they do? They embraced it. When faced with losing everything they just said suck it up, buttercup.