People say I have a general tendency to contemplate the negative. Catastrophe thinking.

“You’re homeless three times a day in your head,” they say.

The truth is more like this: I act as if the world is a positive place for me. I move through it as if the fruit will always be ripe and the trees will always bring me their dappling shade and the rain will always call forth the flowers.

The emphasis on this catastrophe frame of mind is overdone by the therapist and fellowship and, most of all, myself.

I know because eventhough the world tilts hard to throw me off these days, I get up, make strawberries and banana bread for my children and sit down to write.

I know because eventhough it all feels like it is melting, I move forward because it is the only way.