Digging for Diamonds in a Landfill...

That's what I do. A lot. I dig through steaming piles of filthy, stinking garbage and hope against hope to find a shiny rock. Its been my thing for as long as I remember, its just what I do. I pick apart the carcass of something dreadful until I find the one remaining piece of good, the lesson to be learned, the silver lining lingering around. Most likely a coping mechanism developed in my younger days, and I must say that as far as coping mechanisms go, I chose a good one. I decided at an early age to pull myself out of my despair, rather than to drown in it. Not to say that I don't get down. Oh, believe me I most certainly do. Kind of inevitable being a human and all. But I guess I just don't like way that dwelling feels. It feels like.... well it feels like dwelling. As soon as I feel myself succumbing to that oh so tempting self-pity, its like an automatic pep-talk plays in my head. "You are stronger than this. This isn't you. There are so many people who have it worse." And what then?  I seek a solution, a way to make it better. And as I've come to discover, more often than not, there IS a solution (although it may not come easily, and it may require some seriously creative thinking). It isn't always an easy mentality to have but it is mine all the same, whether I like it or not, for better and for (more importantly) worse.
 This philosophy gets a little tricky when it comes to other people, I have come to discover.  Why? Well that's easy; because I can't ever fully control another's behavior, I can not force them to adhere to my well-thought out solutions to their problems. Because guess what? Yup. They are THEIR problems. Also, sometimes shit just....happens. It turns out the simple saying holds some pretty deep wisdom.  There will always be something that is out of my hands. There are some things that I have absolutely no control of, regardless of how much I long for it to be so. There are some things that are dead ends. Like when people refuse to take responsibility, when they refuse to understand, or worse- when they die.
 I have no problem finding positivity where you could never imagine it hides. I am capable of seeing good in the most unimaginable circumstances. My glass is full, I won't let it be empty. I can make lemonade when all I get are a bunch of damn lemons. But the rotten, unusable ones that are sure to poison me..... I can't fuckin throw them away either. And that, friends, is where the battle lies. My ability to decipher what is worth believing in, and what I must let go for my own well-being, is clouded. My gauge for what constitutes an actual diamond can be way off. And then there is that other pesky fact I must learn to face: sometimes there are no diamonds to be found, no matter how hard or long you look. Sometimes what you see is what you get, and the only thing filling a landfill really is just trash.