Caroline + Risk Is A Dangerous Cocktail

Risk tends to watch me staring anxiously off the edge of the cliff and shoves me over whether I want to take the plunge or not.  Sometimes it's good, I hit the water below in a nice smooth dive and am filled with the exhilaration of the thrill. Sometimes it's bad though, and I hit the dried up ground and must figure out how to pick up all the broken pieces of who I was.

My heart dictates what risks I am willing to take, with no say from my mind.  Feeling is different for me.  It's like taking the curling iron that most people just need at medium temperature and cranking it up to maximum heat.  The curls are a whole lot better, but the burn hurts a whole hell of a lot more.  I don't tend to focus on the disciplinary consequences but how hard of a hit the consequences take on my emotional well-being.

There never seems to be a middle ground for me.  I'm all in or I'm all out.  It's why I can get cautious at times.  I want to believe that I can trust everyone, that I can trust them to never hurt me, trust them to understand who I am and how I work, but that isn't how life works in reality. I have to constantly remind myself how quickly and hard my heart can break.

Risks are scary because the outcome is the unknown and there is nothing more terrifying than diving into the unknown with no grasp on if you will be okay or not.  The idea of risk likes to sit in the pit of my stomach and gnaw away at my reasoning.  That's when the reasoning has to stop, the thinking has to stop.  I just have to do.  Have to be.

If I have learned anything in the past year it is that everything will work itself out in the end.  If it hasn't worked out yet, then it's not the end.  Marilyn Monroe said, "Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together."  Sometimes pieces of life don't work out so the next piece of life can. It is about reminding myself that risks are worth taking if I plan on living my life to the fullest.  I'd rather regret a risk I took that didn't work out in my favor than regret a risk I didn't take and forever wonder what the outcome would have been.