Steady hopefulness
I fear so easily. A time pops into my head where I was a jerk or miscommunicated or under-communicated or over-communicated.
And I fear their judgement or their hurt or that I've done something wrong.
Then I try to have a hopeful thought, and there's a voice telling me how bad so many things are in the world.
But I don't have to be hopeful about everything to experience hopefulness.
I don't have to be afraid of everything to be afraid. It takes just one interaction I have to fear something that I don't know.
Maybe I didn't have the "perfect" communication, but I don't know that they have a problem.
I can hope that issues would be communicated, or hope that one bad interaction with me wouldn't harm them, or hope that it wouldn't make them dislike me.
I'm reading Never Enough by Judith Grisel (LOL my first guess was "Chisel Grisel"; i had to look at a note from earlier.).
Never Enough is about addiciton, and she writes about a baseline state of hopefulness. I'm not sure I've had that, at least not in a long time.
So I've been trying to be hopeful today, and I think I like it. (I want to call it a good flavor but it's not a food)