Once again, Val over at Dig Your Toes In has hit the nail on the head for me.

And in the larger sense, we all need that. We’re all fighting our own battles day in and day out. Some are huge, some aren’t so big. But we’re not always going to be able to paste on a smile and trudge through the sewage with smiles on our faces. Sometimes, we’re going to need to crumple up and cry. We ALL need permission to simply be where we are. To feel what we feel. And to know that our problems are not always a direct result of our lack of positivity in a given moment.

We are where we are, and sometimes that’s where we need to be.

While it's nothing like the battle her post referenced, I used to get so very frustrated when I was having a 'deployment day' or needed to not have company at the house and people just didn't understand. They told me to cheer up, think positive, and even said I was backing out on them because I really couldn't handle [self-invited] company and had the nerve to say so. I often wished I had a switch to just think positive and turn off the negative, but apparently I missed that option in the manual. I had more good days than bad but when I was having some bad days, I needed to just deal with them, in my own way.

I needed to be where I was and find my own way to the next step on my own path. Next time I think I'll hand out Val's post before he leaves. Maybe with some highlighted passages.