When does trying become trying too hard?

I’m stuck in a rut. I’m overthinking and just expecting the worse as usual. I confided in S and she agreed, I was overthinking and making it worse for myself. Things weren’t that bad. In the grand scheme of things, it’ll be one of those moments that we’ll be laughing at a couple of months from now. Everything’s fine.

I can’t help it. I don’t want to expect the worse but I am compelled to do so. I know I can’t change the end results even if I run through all possible scenarios in my head. I know running through them brings only harm and has no benefit. I know all this but I can’t seem to stop. It’s actually more of an effort to not think about it than run through the motions. I tell myself I want acceptance from within and that if it’s over it’s over but I can’t stop.

I start bracing myself for catastrophe and then telling myself to relax, you can’t prepare for every slightly-possible tragedy. But I can’t. I don’t want to tell myself ‘I told you so’ when it happens but that’s what I’m screaming at myself now. Internally I scream, that I never should’ve put myself in such a situation again, that I should’ve known better than to forget how much it could hurt, that this is a direct consequence of me breaking my own promise to myself to never let this happen again.

Then there’s the part of me who wants it to work. Who wants it to it’ll work out. Who allows me to believe that it just might work out. The part of me where a lone, smothered voice beckons me to remember all the positive words I’ve accumulated over the past few years, words that I’ve used to build this pedestal where even on my knees I’d be as tall as everyone else.

“If you never play the game because you’re afraid to lose then you will never in hell stand a chance of winning.”

And that’s where my contradictions begin.