holiday break has been nice, don't get me wrong. it's been relaxing and it feels good to be away from the stress of school and just be at home. my real home. in st. louis. columbia still seems somewhat foreign to me. i'm not sure if it'll ever feel completely like home. it's just the way i am i guess, i get attached too easily. and since st. louis has been home to me all my life, everything else just seems like a vacation or a summer camp. but back to holiday break. i've been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of soul searching. 'oh good!' you're thinking. but no, not exactly. not so good. i've just been brooding for two weeks and haven't come to any conclusions. and that's what troubles me. i haven't come to any conclusions about anything; my brain just feels more muddled than ever. i feel like i'm at a mid-life crisis, yet i'm only eighteen. i just can't seem to find direction anywhere. it feels like i'm just retreating more and more into my own mind and can't relate to anyone anymore. the few friends i do have, and the even fewer i've crawled out of bed to hang out with, i find myself harboring resent for. and for no reason at all. i'll be with some of my best friends and thinking horrible things about them. i don't want to be around any of them anymore and it's for no reason at all. just because i'm angry.
in all of this pondering of lifes' existential questions, i had hoped to maybe realize some of my passions. maybe discover a hobby, something to invest my time in. but instead i've come up with pretty much nothing. nothing new at least. nothing of which to deem a revelation. yes, i like to read. yes, i like to write. but you can only spend so many hours sitting in your room. yes, i have passion for music and a deeply rooted love for certain bands that i support. but that can only go so far; i can only do so much from behind my laptop graced with their stickers. i think part of the problem is a fear caused by gymnastics. random, but hear me out. i loved gymnastics up until a certain point. but because i'm such an obsessive perfectionist and have problems communicating my feelings in verbal forms, i pushed myself for five years to do something that i was quickly losing my love for. 'quickly losing' is actually an understatement. i ended up hating the sport with everything in me, but because i'm said obsessive perfectionist who never verbalizes her feelings, and because i was terrified to tell my parents i wanted to quit, i kept at it until i couldn't stand it anymore. i quit two weeks in to my senior year and it was the best decision of my life. but i think the fact that gymnastics so easily consumed me and i loathed it so much, has placed a fear in me. i'm so scared to become involved in anything because i fear i will end up being consumed by it, hating it, and not having a way out. and then my life will certainly spiral out of control and i will be left with nothing. i'm so afraid of getting stuck. it's like claustrophobia, but of life. that's the best way i can put my feelings into words. and i don't know how to get past it.
so i guess my problem is this. i don't know how to enjoy things anymore. it feels like i'm in this downward progression where nothing makes me happy anymore. apathy is sucking the life and personality out of me. i'm just so scared of what will happen if i can't discover any of my passions. i'm scared i'll end up with nothing from college and end up in some nine to five desk job that i hate. i'm terrified of hating my future life. but i hate where i'm at right now too. and i can't figure out how to break out of this cycle of thinking. i can't figure out how to find joy in things, how to find something i love. i can't figure out why am i so angry with everyone and everything, when no one has done anything to hurt me. why do i hurt so badly then? everything hurts me. everyone hurts me. i may not seem like it on the outside [because i can paste a great smile on my face] but i'm excruciatingly sensitive. and i'm really fragile. and if you say something, i probably overanalyze it, twist it, and feel hurt from it.
so with that off my chest, let me try and spin it all around and make a happy ending. i guess this is where the resolution comes around.
i'm going to try and do things for me. things that make me happy. it sounds selfish, but i need to worry about myself more and stop trying to make everyone else happy. i have a problem with putting too much of myself into other people - i try and fix others and want so badly for them to succeed, and for them to be happy, but i forget about myself. and it's obviously taking its toll. i'm also going to try and stop being so crippled by this social phobia i have of meeting new people. i think new minds and new words might do me some good. and i'm going to try and discover more passions. i need to find more joy in life, because things are so dark and dull from my warped perspective right now. hopefully i'll find some light at the end of the tunnel soon. let's hope this new year brings me wonderful revelations!
you can't understand what's running through my head
and you can't understand about half the words that i said
so let me paint a picture instead
these demons have left me for dead
but i'll get out of my head
help me get out
and if i'm sitting in silence
[staring at ghosts]
you ought to know
Hey sweetie!! You know I've always been partial to you, but I'm beginning to see why I like you so much. You and I are WAY too much alike! I don't mean to sound like a silly adult, but I went through something really similar in college. I can't believe how much you think like me! I'll write you an email later, and maybe it will help you just a little? Love you to pieces!
ReplyDeleteThe email turned into a bit of a book!!! Just warning you, you'll have eye strain when you're done with it! I hope it makes you smile if nothing else!!
ReplyDeleteI know exactly how you feel. I've been where you are. It's a horrible feeling. All I can say is, things will fall into place. I promise. I used to feel the exact same way about having no direction and not knowing where to go, what to do, who to do it with... It sucks, but listen to me when I tell you this; Things will fall into place. More than you could have ever hoped for. Be patient.
ReplyDeleteWarning" this is massively and inappropriatly long
ReplyDeleteI know it has to feel like its easy for the outside world to chalk all of your problems up to your mom's passing. And I know it's a senastive subject so don't hate me for talking about it, because it may be something u only like to talk about with your close friends, or not at all, but as someone who has lost a parent too, please hear me out.
It may seem like you're past it, or dealing with it, like you are at the point of moving on. But in a year or two or three you will look back on all the decisions you've made and realize how much you really were effected by it everyday, even while oblivious to it.
I lost my dad febuary of freshman year and i only had my breakthrough, my coming out of the cloud bank of grief this past summer. And I would swear it was all dealt with and I still had a healthy amount of grief but that I was thinking clearly. But as i said those words i also might have written this exact entry.
And telling you that it's normal won't do anything for you, i assume, because it never helped me any... and it mostly pissed me off. How could anything I'm feeling be normal when what i want through was so wrong?
But it might help to know that you aren't the only one that even a year and a half, two years and longer is still not happy again. I hope it brings you comfort to know you aren't the only one.
And you will have to find your own hobby or something similar to help, being a trooper for everyone else won't help you any... but from my experiance and not just with the loss of a parent, but when you set aside time for soul searching, and you find your brain turning to mush anyway. When you get mad and apathetic all at once for a period of time, I traveled.
I just drove... all alone, but not in a morbid way. I'd pick a dot on the map and drive. I'd listen to music. I'd scream the lyrics. I'd cry. Or I'd just smile and think. I'd let all the windows down and let the wind wash over me. Or I would turn the heat on and cook. I'd stop somewhere for lunch and loved that I knew no one and no one knew me. I wasn't putting on a face for any of those people. I wouldn't run into anyone I knew. I'd stop at a park or rest stop or camp ground and sit in the grass under a tree, listen to my ipod, draw, write, read, just look up at the trees and take a nap... It doesn't take much money... stock up on food and water bottles at the dollar store, grab a cooler full of ice and fill it with massivly caffinated drinks...
I don't know thats thats what's right for you, but clearing out all the trash in your head, it can clarify what u want, even when u didn't know it before. It can help you feel closer to them, and appriciate those still here. It can show you who you don't want in your life. It empowered me in a time i felt like i was just wading in sinking sand.
So sorry for the extensive post, i just wish someone had said some of that to me. I don't want you to feel like that later on. And im sorry if i overstepped. There's something very powerful when you see someone dealing with something you've dealt with.
Regaurdless know i mean only well and hope you find your answers. Take care! J
I've been doing a lot of thinking over winter break, too. I'm halfway through my junior year of college and I still don't know what I'm going to do. Honestly, it's scary. I know what I WANT to do, but making it happen is a whole different thing.
ReplyDeleteI've always been a "people pleaser." I'll bend over backwards to accomodate others without much thought of how it affects me or how it makes me feel. I've also learned this year that I need to start doing things for ME.
We're a lot alike. I know you'll get through it. And if you need anything, I'm always a click or phone call away. :)
I see what you meant about writing something similar to what I was saying about sacrifice the other day.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand the claustrophobic fear of life from ruining something out of perfectionism. I had a very similar experience with science. For a long part of my life, I studied the sciences and was on a pre-Med track. One day I woke up and realized how much I had grown to dread and hate those classes. The classes I was taking were all rote memorization, they weren't about critically thinking. My love of the scientific method and the logical quest for absolute answers had led me down a path where to perform well I had to become mechanical -- it was killing everything I had loved and found joy in.
I've opted not to go into law because I know it would do the same thing to me. I love words, I love being able to make a solid argument and defend it with logic and evidence. I also know that if I were asked to do this every day of every week of every year on cases that I wasn't fired up about, there would come a day I'd wake up and hate the things I had loved. I can't imagine hating logic, hating words, hating facts... So I'm not pre-law -- I decided not to go down a path to make me despise something I love so much.
My suggestion would be to really think about what separates the things that give us joy from the things we're truly passionate about. If something gives you joy, trying to make it perfect and mechanical will end up killing what you originally loved about it, whatever it is. If you're truly passionate about something, it becomes consuming -- both a means and an ends to itself. You don't have to be passionate about something to find joy in it. But if you try to devote everything in you to something that makes you happy, it's very easy to grow to hate it.
Hating what you once loved is a real tragedy, it's like killing a part of yourself. I understand the fear. But, it's not a good reason to stop loving.
So, how's that resolution coming nearly four months into '09?
ReplyDeleteOk, so, I decided to go back in time and read your old posts, and I'm very glad I did. Reading this one felt as if I was reading something I would write. Let me quote you--
ReplyDelete"i just can't seem to find direction anywhere. it feels like i'm just retreating more and more into my own mind and can't relate to anyone anymore. the few friends i do have, and the even fewer i've crawled out of bed to hang out with, i find myself harboring resent for. and for no reason at all. i'll be with some of my best friends and thinking horrible things about them. i don't want to be around any of them anymore and it's for no reason at all. just because i'm angry."
"it's like claustrophobia, but of life. that's the best way i can put my feelings into words. and i don't know how to get past it."
"i'm scared i'll end up with nothing from college and end up in some nine to five desk job that i hate. i'm terrified of hating my future life. but i hate where i'm at right now too."
and last but certainly not least as this was the part that literally felt as if I had written it before, or at least thought it obsessively in my head
"i can't figure out why am i so angry with everyone and everything, when no one has done anything to hurt me. why do i hurt so badly then? everything hurts me. everyone hurts me. i may not seem like it on the outside [because i can paste a great smile on my face] but i'm excruciatingly sensitive. and i'm really fragile. and if you say something, i probably overanalyze it, twist it, and feel hurt from it."
I'm a sophomore in college, luckily this plagued you your freshman year. I'm one more year closer to graduating and have no idea what to do with myself.