Dealing With Disappointment

I thought long and hard about writing this particular blog – but I decided that my goal has been to write about the things I’m feeling – good or bad – and sometimes it isn’t always good. Disappointment is something that everyone faces – and learning to deal with it is part of this journey for me.

When I was a teenager, I had a poster in my room that read, “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.” I’m sure that the I didn’t have this poster for the wisdom it contained – I believe it had a cute little koala bear on it – and since I had an extensive collection of koala bears of all sorts at the time – the only reason I had this poster was as part of my collection. Still there is a universe of truth in that statement.

This year for Christmas, I didn’t get what I wanted. More specifically, I got something that I absolutely did NOT want, and something that I said I didn’t want – in both generic terms, which I said hundreds of times, and in very specific terms, mentioning the exact gift by name, on more than one occasion. In my past – I could not have admitted that I didn’t want something. And the feelings of not being heard and not being important festered, because I wouldn’t or couldn’t admit to them. And when those things festered – guess what I did – yep – I ate and ate to make myself feel better.

I know it sounds childish – I’m not a little kid who sits on Santa’s lap and whispers what to bring me for Christmas. And yet, when I opened this gift, I was so crushed and SO disappointed, that it took everything I had not to cry. To make matters worse, I had a strong suspicion that it was what I was getting – and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

I must confess that I pouted nearly all day on Christmas Day! I’m not proud of that. It just seems to me that when a person says over and over and over that she doesn’t want something, and then she gets it – that somebody isn’t paying attention. And more than anything – I want somebody to pay attention to me. But even though I did not handle my disappointment in a grown up way – I also did not handle it in the way I have always handled disappointment in the past. I didn’t eat it – and I didn’t keep it buried. I apologize to everyone I came in contact with on Christmas Day – for my childish behavior. And I apologize for making people around me uncomfortable. But I do not apologize for being disappointed.