Arielle's Word-of-the-Day: FORCE

June Blog Challenge Day 11: FORCE

For the first time in this challenge, no inspiration has struck me surrounding this word.  Force. I feel like I'm going to have to force this post to happen!

Hmmm.... How do a few quotes to start off sound?  Good?  Good.

Force is all-conquering, but its victories 

are short lived. -- Abraham Lincoln

This quote makes a lot of sense to me.  It reminds me of the idea of forcing a square peg into a round hole.  Something that hits home for me.  All my life I feel like I've been forced into a world in which I don't fit.

I was not designed to be forced. I will breathe after my own 

fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. -- Henry David Thoreau

 I don't think I'm strong.  I think I've been forced to live inside my head for so long, it's actually made me a target for the rest of the world.  My insecurities used to be well masked by ed... not so much these days.  In some ways that's a good thing, I'm getting stronger than my ed.  In other ways, it's kind of scary starting to "breathe after my own fashion."

Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing 

but my own.  I am the force.  -- Elaine Maxwell

This quote is somewhat powerful.  It seems to say that I can choose to fail, or I can choose to succeed.  It's all up to me.  The scary thing is that sometimes I think I prefer failure over success, if only because it's more familiar.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved

 by understanding. -- Albert Einstein

I guess this is a good summary of force.  Any time I've been forced into anything, I never seem to be able to understand the hows and whys of the situation.  I'm a big understander - I have to know what's going on, what's expected, why it's important, and so on, in order to be fully present in the situation.  Maybe that's why I struggled so much over the past few years - my focus was on ed, and not on understanding the situations at hand.  No peace whatsoever.

(Hmm... guess I found some words after all.  Interesting word choice, that's for sure!)

Prompt: Does this word have negative connotations for you? Or does it seem powerful in a good way? Do you consider  yourself a force? Is your eating disorder a force? Was it? There is no end to the ways in which this word can be interpreted.