Disgusting Biscuit

Here's the thing about change: I hate it. I loathe it. If change were a biscuit I wouldn't eat it. I'm not one of those people who thrives on it, and loves moving from house to house and job to job. I don't even love moving in tiny ways, like from the couch to the kitchen.

To me, change is synonymous with terrifying. I didn't like it when my best friend moved ten miles further away. I don't like it when I go to the supermarket, and find that Bird's Eye have bafflingly stopped making those chicken breasts in a garlic sauce. It just seems senseless, stupid, and occasionally like the universe is trying to fook with only me.

Or is it that beared dude who runs Bird's Eye who's trying to fook with me? I don't know, but I'm onto him. I see him making new lines that are actually good for you and really delicious, then tearing them away from me just as I'm used to them. And I don't like it.

I don't like his stupid beardy face.

I don't like change.

Of course, I know where this risk-averse terror comes from. I know what my craving for calm, safe stability is about. It's about abandonment, and sudden shocking death, and abrupt traumatising accidents. All those things have touched my life, and all those things have left scars underneath my skin. And just when I think they've completely healed over, just when I think they're gone for good, they build an extra level of gnarly tissue, that presses against the bits inside me marked "random food I like" or "some telly program I love".

You know, minor things. That I shouldn't really care about. But I do, because of those big things. Those big things are always in the back of my mind, telling me not to dare, or hope, or wish for too much. They've just made me want to be safe - but unfortunately, safe is so boring. I know its boring. I know I'm boring, compared to other people.

But I am trying to change, a little. And I think I'm getting there, too. Recently, I had to leave my job of twelve years. A job I've loved; a job that had become almost a part of me. And I thought when I left that I'd feel an echo of that terrible grief, that deep sadness, those losses I can't quite recover from.

Only I didn't. Within a week or so, I felt lighter, happier. So much stress fell away from me - stress I hadn't even known I'd been feeling. And it reminded me how good change can be, though you might have been afraid to make it. For the first time in my life, a sudden and shocking change turned out well. And I suppose it did, in part, because I had some hand in it. I was able to choose.

When it comes to change, choosing makes all the difference. You just have to be brave enough to do it.