I don’t mind people knowing my thoughts about the things I have discussed here, hence why I feel compelled to blog some of them to begin with. In matters of privacy in my household, I do trust my husband not to impede on my personal space… such as my journals. If he did, I guess that would be his issue more than mine since there is nothing hidden. I just don’t feel the need to explain the things and lil’ chats I have with myself privately.
Needing people… people that you need. I need my husband. I can’t imagine my world without him. Ask me to try and I will just tell you it is fucked up. I need my mom. She never fails to understand me. I need my sister because she is my true female best friend. I need my brother because he reminds me not to give a shit about other people’s perceptions. I need my nephew because he has shown me how amazing the love of family can be.
I sometimes in my despair, feel like nobody needs me, but I know that isn’t true. I know my husband needs me or we wouldn’t be together. I know pretty much that all the people that I listed that I need, need me as well. Somehow we all manage to balance each other out, sometimes in weird ways.
Sometimes I like feeling needed… sometimes I don’t. It’s a balance I guess of feeling loved and wanted and feeling like when people need you that you have a huge responsibility. Of course being the social creatures that we are, there are only select times when I don’t want to feel needed.
There’s a difference between people who need you and people who need you to use you. Sometimes it is not obvious at first. You think that somebody needs you, but reality is they are using. I’ve unfortunately had a lot of friendships like that. I seem to attract those types of people, or at least I did.
I’m starting to realize the delicate balance of give and take in relationships much better than I used to.
I was one of those people that gave, gave, and gave and gave some more and maaaaaaaaan… when people figured that out, 95% of them would exploit the shit out of it. And that fuels so much anger and resentment that it can be almost unreal. In fact I quit my first job I had in WI over it which was such a shame because I actually really did love the job otherwise and was well on my way to promotions ect. I just couldn’t deal with it. I was so mentally exhausted by everyone dumping their work and all their shit on me, and I just couldn’t say no.
But again, now… it is MY CHOICE, my choice to say when enough is enough. Or that you can’t use me, or take from me without giving back in return.
Little bits of power regained one step at a time.
Almost everybody in my life knows how to push my buttons I’ve come to realize. Perhaps it is because I am an over emotional and slightly (slightly? lol) neurotic person. I suppose if I got rid of everybody who pushed my buttons I would be a rather lonely person indeed. It’s ironic tho how many of them push it by not listening to what I am actually saying. (Or maybe that’s my perception, maybe they are not listening to what I’m actually not saying.)
Right now, I feel completely powerless over the financial aid situation. In fact, this is like completely powerless because somebody else holds my future in their hands basically. It sucks and hurts because I didn’t have the ability at the time to make the proper decisions so now somebody else is going to make them for me and it actually makes me very angry as well because I constantly think too… that none of this had to happen … had to get this bad.
But… I really tried to push through that semester that I took off. I really did try to just… deal. I would go to class and have a panic attack the entire 2 hours of a class. But I tried.
It’s hard to try to think of it as a lesson of giving up control, but that’s what I’m trying to do. The fear… the anxiety… has been about CONTROL CONTROL CONTROL. And now something HUGE is out of my control. Completely, except for filling out the forms, writing the letter, and gathering what turned out to be scant information.
I can’t control the rest of this and it is fucking TERRIFYING, but at the same time, the only thing to do is to yield to it and find some nature of acceptance because nothing can change it now.
I just don’t like feeling powerless. Not when I’ve fought so hard to maintain control. But I guess now I question how in control I’ve really been anyways. Because I have been making decisions, sure, but I have not been making many of those decisons based on what I want or need. I have been making many of those decisions out of fear, out of anxiety, out of hopelessness & desperation (a theme? Yes.)
The past couple years, so few of my decisions have truly been my choice. And the ones that have? Those have not left me with negative consenquences, bad feelings, or disappointments. I am learning that those decisions that the authentic me makes, are always in my best interest. Yes, always. Because if I really listen to my spirit, it does not lead me astray. It empowers me. Denying it however puts me into powerless situations in which I can never truly win.
Time is the only thing that brings light into the darkness. Like everything else it cycles. It can’t always be light. It can’t always be dark. I’m learning that now. There is no such as a life always spent in the light just as there is no such thing as a life continunally spent in the dark, even if it feels like it is always going to be one particular way.
There have been times in my life when I felt completely hopeless. Like really completely truly hopeless. A real kind of darkness. Not a passing depression or funk. A deep dark abyss filled with nothing. Emptiness. Complete black despairing emptiness. Been there. And not just once or twice. The joys of being hardwired for depression.
But the light, it always comes. How? When? Never the same, but it comes.
Writing… has primarily been the window that I opened to let the smallest ray shine in. Exploring every single emotion, even if it felt trivial. Writing was my way to be self indulgent. Exploring fears, hopes, dreams, fantasies, reality… everything. Everything was about words.
When I was around 12 or 13… I discovered hip hop and starting writing bars… that became songs. Conceptual. Always conceptual. About telling stories. I’m old enough know to be high and mighty about the genre and yeah… it saddens me now but I digress. I had been writing poetry since I was 8… 9. It was weird being an 8 year old writing poetry, but again I digress.
For 6 years solid, I thrived on lyrics, on poetry. Anger, sadness, love… they became lyrics and poetry. My journals, I filled and filled with everything I ever needed to say. I wasn’t a point to writ every night, I just did. I just was. I didn’t judge my life or experiences like I do now. Now I seem to try to decide what is worthy to talk about, to give meaning to. But once upon a time, everything had meaning simply because it was my experience.
There is no explanation of how that gets stolen. Maybe it is the simple progression of fear. I never questioned the ability of the written word to transform my life until suddenly… I did.
The effort to express myself at all felt so daunting, so overwhelming. How do you describe what no longer makes sense? How do you face your unhappiness after ignoring it for so long? How do you acknowledge that in which you don’t want to acknowledge at all?
Hello avoidance.
When my expression ceased it should have been my first clue that I was heading down a dangerous path. I am having to totally relearn how to express myself. I am having to exhume things that shold have been laid to rest long ago. I am having to take baby steps again. There are childish “I can’ts”.
I keep thinking the day I’ll be truly healed is the day I write a piece of poetry from my heart again. Without stopping to think about it.
Maybe it will be one about my struggle and will come with a ray of sunshine at the end.
I’ve had it terrible lately. I won’t sleep at all, or I’ll sleep for 3-4 hours and then wake up and be unable to fall back asleep even though I am sooooo tired. And today I look as tired as I feel. I have a test in 2 hours. I plan on leaving after the test and just coming home. And hopefully take a nap and then get up and go to second class. I just want to sleep and have good sleep. Insomnia is one of the worst things ever.
It’s funny to think of that phrase… “if I ever completely let myself go…” What does that mean?
I almost think of it in terms of having dealt with depression & anxiety.. completely letting go… insanity, mental break… negative things.
I guess letting go in this case would be to be authentically yourself. Trust in that I have fantasized about that many many times through out the coursework of my life. It has always merely been a fantasy… mostly.
But even I haven’t truly known what that would look like because I don’t know myself well enough to know. Maybe at one point I did, but not right now. Would I dress different? Speak more? Say my thoughts without reservation? Say what I feel about things I’ve hidden? Dump all my secrets on the world and tell them to deal with it? Do thinks without reserve and not care if the world gawked at me as I did so?
Hmmm maybe being authentically yourself is some form of insanity after all. Maybe we all wish we could be a little insane in that respect but society molds us with its expectations of this fucked up “normal”… whatever that is.
I think if I were truly me in the “let myself go completely” kind of way… people would think I was a bit… eccentric to say the least. To anxious fearful me that is frightening… a bad thing. To authentic me, I could care less. I know I would be happier being fully true to myself.
I always feel tho that it isn’t ultimately anybody but me holding me back from letting go. My insecurities and my expectations of what I should be or should look like or whatever before I can tackle living authentically. There’s always a I can’t do this because of that kind of rule that I follow in my life. I wait for the day for everything to fall into palce in order to live authentically. But who knows, that day may never come. I won’t say that it won’t ever come because we can’t know that either, but that I just shouldn’t put all my cards on it. If it did, that would be fantastic, but then again, would I even know if it did?
(This initially begin with a list of things I have been over the course of my life)
I’m sure the list could go on…
From waht I see now, everything is full circle. EVERYTHING.
Everything I have loved about myself, at some point in time I have been on the opposite side of. Everything I hate about myself, same deal. It almost makes me feel silly for hating anything about myself because I have been the oppostie of those things and it is proof that I can be the oppostie of those things that I currently despise. I’m not actually stuck being one way for the rest of my life.
It is so easy to get stuck in that “this is how it will be forever” ridiculousness. I’ve always been that way and yet, has it ever been forever? Nope.
I’ve never truly been outside myself forever. Unable to reconnect. I always find my way back home eventually.
It is probably just stupid pms. I hate hormones. Not to mention I’m so bloated I feel like if I bumped into something sharp I would pop.
I woke up from a terrible dream. I’m one of those people who has a terrible dream and then wake up feeling as if it were real. Which is really such bullshit. It is like okay mind, this didn’t really happen, so you don’t have to feel like it did. Stupid mind.
Then I decided to stalk look up people I used to know on facebook for no apparent reason. This is where most of my sad came from. I know you can make your life look however you want it to on facebook but it just seemed like everybody I knew…used to know… whatever had perfect lives. Finished school…. lived in cool places…. had cool jobs… made beautiful babies. So I went into FML mode. Oh hai, I’m 25 (well pretty more or less)… still in school…could very well be there for the next 4-5 years who the hell knows… and uhhh not much else going on for me. I don’t know what the hell I think I should have going on for me, but apparently it is more than this.
I’m never happiest as I am out doing a photo gig. I know that now and it is KILLING me that work seems impossible to come by. It is KILLING me that I know I have a natural talent for this… I’m frittering away in school… when I just wish I could work. I wish I could get a loan… start a business…. and just put all my efforts into that and make it work. I have absolutely no idea how being in school is going to get me any closer to that, except that I get to go into debt to schmooze.
And I think it kills me a bit too… to want to start a family but not being able to.
but… it is probably self musings and rambling nonetheless.
Stupid period finally showed up… which means I’ve had the shortest cycle I’ve had in a long time (50 some days, ha) but I’m really tired of the stupid over the top anxiety I get a few days before it starts and then a few days after. I just feel like a nut… and don’t recall feeling that way during it before Paxil… so don’t know if it is related or just a coincidence. But for now any new found positivity has taken a shit on me. And I really want a breadstick. At 6am.
We went and watched the fireworks last night. Well I sourta watched them. Mostly through my camera. That is really the only reason I wanted to go through the hassle of going out to see them, b/c I wanted to see what my camera could do with them. So I dragged out the tripod and all. I was more interested in playing with my camera, as usual. And then it took over an hour to get back home. I live 10 fucking minutes away from where they hold the fireworks. I don’t think the traffic will be worth it next year.
Also… I managed to finally make a header & fix my blog up a bit. Weeee. It looks much better now. I dunno why I chose red though. Never been a big red fan, but for some reason I like it. And I’m finally calmed the hell down.
I don’t think I am totally myself with anybody. I don’t know how to be. For most of my life I have been somebody different with each person that I’ve encountered. It’s a bit disturbing really. The only time I feel myself coming out… being myself truly in a way is on message boards/blogs/ect that I frequent online because I guess there is some anonomity on the internet that makes me feel safer to be myself. That and I’m never put on the spot… I can give something a good long thought if I need too before I ’say’ it.
It’s not that I don’t long to completly be myself with those closest to me, it is just that sometimes I don’t know how to be. I feel like okay, xxx expects me to be a certain way and xxx expects me to be a certain different way and it does get exhausting. I got so used to living this way that it was like okay, I don’t even know who I am anymore.
I feel like I would be closer with certain people if I could truly be myself, but for some reason it’s difficult… I think because I fear judgement too much, I’m not sure. I also have a hard time expressing myself. I feel often like I speak in a way that people don’t ‘get’. when writing I don’t have that problem but when I’m speaking I do. It only adds to my feelings of awkwardness.
Judgments… at the end of the day I try to decide what judgments matter. I’ve lived a lot of my life (especially after getting the great label of ‘high school drop out’) trying to prove people wrong about me, as if it really mattered anyways. The truth is, and it does make me sad to realize it but it is true, is there isn’t really ANYTHING I can do that will make people change their minds about me if they don’t want to to begin with.
To want some kind of praise for doing this or that is just stupid of me in a way. Okay, no stupid…. maybe moe naive or wishful thinking. I was happier when I didn’t do so many things just for the approval of others. (Ask me how I ended up wasting the first couple years of college and was intially a psych major).
In some ways, the past few years have been like reliving the worst years of junior high/early high school all over again.
Maybe I’ll get closer to ‘graduation’ soon.
