Grass is greener

I do not feel much like writing, but not because the past two days have been uneventful. I'm just feeling bogged down and lackluster by the rainy weather. I'm riding tomorrow so hopefully the weather will be nicer.

I cleaned half of my room- the less messy side. I would have cleaned all of it but I've sort of created a nest of notecards, books, unfinished friendship bracelets, and towels next to my bed that seems a shame to pull apart. Oh man. I can totally see myself in 60 years, living alone in a smelly little house with shag rugs and cats and empty ice cream cartons strewn all over the furniture. It's basically how I'm living now, actually...

I was thinking about this DBT skill that I picked up when I was in program. I think it's called the Comfort by Comparison skill... not sure though. Anyways, the idea is, when you are feeling really awful about yourself or the way you look or the way you ate, you just think of people who are in worse situations and then you feel slightly less like shit. You think about the orphans in Haiti, the greasy pelicans living in the oil spill, the woman who was murdered and dismembered in Randolph, Massachusetts. And toll booth workers... they all have it much worse than me.

The pros of this skill are:

-puts things in perspective
-gives you some hope
-keeps you distracted from own problems

The cons:

-reading about tragedies can make you more depressed, thus sinking even further into gloom
-might make you feel somehow invalidated by saying that your problems are small and thus not real problems
-can make you so guilty you'll want to self sabotage and then engage in behaviors

This skill has been on my mind since this morning. My dad keeps an enormous black leather case under his desk which he's always said has important historical documents in it, but I've never asked any further. Today I opened it up and found a pretty impressive collection of front page stories, some dating back to the 1960's. He's got newspapers from 9/11, Neil Armstrong on the Moon, Red Sox series win in 2004, the Leakey's discovery of Lucy the hominid, Princess Diana's accident, Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's too... some happy historical moments but mostly sad stuff that just made me think about how little I've actually experienced. What's an eating disorder compared to stuff like world wars?