So I debated about blogging about this one. Journal? Blog? Journal? Blog? Journal?

Blog.

See, it's halfway through my "positive thought of the day" postings, and for the last few days I've struggled to find any slivers of positivity. There's been tidbits here and there, but more and more I feel as if I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's hard to admit this. And hopefully, admitting it may put some fuel in what is now a very empty tank.

In my opinion, positivity is different from gratefulness. It's much bigger, more encompassing. A state of being. I'm doing just fine with the smaller "greateful" part, but seriously struggling with the bigger "positivity" part.

Yesterday's post was let the "nagging" items go. And as per the usual, the Universe threw at me everything possible to challenge me on what I chose. So last night, I lay there, at 3:30 am, ruminating about a whole bunch of "nagging" things, unable to get back to sleep. I tried petting the cat, changing positions, deep breathing, laying flat on my back with an eye bag, attempting to meditate. Nothing worked. I debated about taking half a sleeping pill, then decided not to. I've had a lot of these nights in my lifetime. I've tried clusters of things to resolve the sleeplessness, including getting out of bed, reading, doing yoga. Last night, I drifted back to sleep several hours later and had fitful dreams before Alethea's alarm woke me up.

I've had a recurring dream in the past few months. I'm always in an unfamiliar airport. I get separated from my luggage, purse, bag. Sometimes doing this is intentional, sometimes not. The times it has been intentional, I've looked back, changed my mind, second-guessed myself. I became fearful and panicked, concerned that I couldn't get back to them before they are lost or taken away. During another dream, I was at the terminal, holding my bags by an empty gate, waiting to board, but I I lost track of time reading a book and upon realizing this, became concerned that I missed my flight. When I asked the woman next to me if she could help, she refused, got up, and walked away. The most recent dream involved me being in a taxing cab with someone else, rushing to get to the airport, frantically trying to get to my bags that were already there and arrive before they or I miss the flight. And on the way there, we got hopelessly lost.

Dreams are metaphors, and I'm still working on fully deciphering this one beyond the more obvious themes of deciding to let go, walk away, and/or having regrets about decisions, and well, the baggage that accompanies it.

Which comes back to the title of this post: faith and hope.

In the middle of that early morning tossing and turning, at one point it felt as if I had lost hope. Completely. As in no longer there. I started to dissect the thought. Was it that I had lost hope about everything? Or that I had lost it about specific things? Was it about any of those ongoing little things that continue to nag me? Or the biggger decisions that I'm struggling to make to help overcome my current unhappiness? In the end, I decided that I hadn't lost complete hope. But I was facing and coming to terms with hard facts that some of the bigger things that are plaguing me aren't going to resolve themselves without making some drastic decisions.

I keep saying this. I keep blogging about this. I'm blogging about it here yet again. And here I sit, still thinking about it rather than taking action and doing SOMETHING about it.

Last night, in Alethea's and my relentless attempt to find something on live televsion since we ran out of TiVo options, we ended up in the tail end (no pun intended) of Finding Nemo. It was the scene were Dory sees the murky shadow of a fish in the distance, which turns out to be a whale, who, upon which, swallows them up. Once inside, Marlin keeps smacking himself against the whale's mouth, frustrated and more and more panicked, but unable to get out. Dory keeps speaking "whale". Then the water level starts to drop.

Marlin: "The water's going down. It's-it's-it's going down."

Dory: "Hmmm you sure about that?"

Marlin: "Look! Already it's half empty."

Dory: "Hmmm I'd say it's half full."

Marlin: "Stop that! It's half empty!"

And as the water level continues to drop, they both hang onto the tongue. The whale says to Dory, "Go back to the throat." Marlin follows with "Of course he wants us to go there, that's EATING us!"

Dory: "He [the whale] says it's time to let go."

Marlin: "But, but how do you know that nothing bad will happen?"

Dory: "I don't!"

Whereupon, Alethea turns to me with a chuckle and says to me "You're Marlin."

I held back tears. Because you know what? She's right. Yes, I'm strong, I have a lot of courage, I bitch and whine and in general, when the going gets tough I can perservere to a point. Sometimes I get scathed in the process, but more often than not, I do make it through. It's the vantage point I choose when I go through that makes the trip much harder than it needs to be.

So, when you step back and look at things, it's really about faith AND hope.

And when faced with a decision, as I am now (and have been for awhile), that requires to me to make a really large change, I want guarantees, I want to know that nothing "bad" will happen.

Truth is, I don't.