Let's use the analogy of a disease.

Disease is your body's way of telling you that there is something abnormal in your bodily functions; your body may be secreting too much of a chemical or hormone, or sometimes it's too little, or your body may be degenerating at too fast a rate than normal aging. To inform the person to whom possesses the body, signals are sent out to inform the person, or the brain, or to inform conscious thought of the situation. So the person feels pain, or discomfort, or fever, and is informed that "there's something wrong with your body, go do something about it".

A sick body may resume most if not all of its functions. For as serious condition, they call it a "remission". A remission from cancer means that whatever's wrong with your body is now under control, and the cancer is not causing your body to act in a dysfunction manner. The body is now 'normal'.

But a sick body is never really whole is it? It simply means that there is an uneasy equilibrium within the functions of your body. Out of the say 10 'things' happening in your body, some positively and others negatively, the total nett effect is zero. At any one time, a hairline trigger could upset this delicate balance and trip the entire equilibrium, causing the body to malfunction again. The body now suffers a 'relapse'; the disease is back.

Well, in life, people suffer from 'relapses' as well. Life is an intricate and delicate balancing act. We adjust ourselves - our thoughts, our lifestyles, our emotions, our bodies, to try to become better all the time. We adjust our time to find more time for our friends or families or to exercise. We adjust our minds to think positively and in a more accurate way so as to ensure healthier emotions or to avoid breakdown of relationships. We tinkle, tweak, polish, alter, modify, regulate to achieve that state of being which we define as "good" or "successful", to us. And when we finally achieve that state of perfection, we glow and bask in our achievements,not understanding that, this state of perfection needs to be constantly up-kept and maintained. It requires effort, energy, determination, perseverance. Relapses happen, and when that happens, we have to go back to working at it again, to once again achieve that specific state of being.

The point I'm trying to make, to myself mostly is this, that it's ok to have a relapse; that having a relapse doesn't mean I've failed, and am hopeless, and will never get where I want to get. Every time a 'relapse' takes place, things are getting better, because a finer and ever more delicate alteration is taking place to make me better, stronger, hardier, not to mention prettier, wiser and taller? That's where the term "well adjusted" comes from, to become well requires much and frequent adjustments.

Life is a process, a journey, an adventure. Celebrate life, don't beat yourself up over it.