why do you play with my head, why do you play with my mind?

Oh, I’m so selfish.  I’m tired.  I’m stressed.  I feel like I’ve come to the end of myself and I don’t know where else to go.  I absolutely hate feeling like this.  I feel like everything I have ever wanted has gone out the window and good things have happened to everyone but me.  I hate feeling like this.  I am so tired. 

I go through cycles; I’m not always like this…but like I’ve said before, I have been waiting, for months, for the other shoe to drop, and it has.  I ask myself, look at all the great things that I have going for me?!  Why in the world would I be upset even for a moment?!  But I can’t function in the things I want to function in, I can’t be myself, I don’t seem to fit anywhere, and I feel confused almost everywhere I go.

For years I put myself into a group and I was happy there, or at least I thought I was.  I functioned there just find and was an alpha in the group for years.  Everything made sense to me and no one could argue with me.  Probably because I was young and stupid but really thought I knew everything.  How sad.  And yet through that process I taught myself a whole new cultural way of being. 

As I continue to live my life, try to grow up, and thereby function outside of this circle, I only grow more confused.  I’m tired.  It’s like a large-scale culture shock.  I want to be happy but don’t know what that is, I want to be myself but don’t know who that is.  I keep working at stuff thinking that I’m going to some kind of conclusion only to find myself repeatedly killing time.  It’s becoming oddly painful.  As though as a person you’re intended to fulfill some kind of meaning that I just have not resolved.

I’m feeling old and I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself to make something of my life.  It’s as though I need some kind of reinforcement to tell myself that I’m beautiful, that I’m wonderful, that I’m worth something.  Some philosophies would argue that worth is inherent, and I just don’t know how I feel about that.  I believed that very strongly, until I began to experience people ascribing worth to me, and the latter seems more real than the former. 

I’m confused, maybe.  That’s probably the best way of putting it.  I should probably talk to someone.  But I don’t want to.  I just want things to magically change.  I just want to be frickin’ normal, but everyone says that there is no such thing.  I’m exhausted, I need sleep, I need rest, I need a life.  I could have all of those things on some level I suppose, but I don’t.  I have them in pieces. 

It seems unrealistic to complain about some crap that on some level I have no control over, and in some cases everyone deals with this crap.  I guess that shouldn’t mean that I don’t or that it should be completely insignificant to me, but whatever, I have feelings, I hate having feelings.  Not that I want to live my life as a total robot, but damn, I just hate feeling like this.  I just want someone to tell me, hey, it’s going to be okay.  I’m being oversensitive I suppose.  And, if everyone goes through this stuff, maybe they do for a reason, and maybe, so will I go through it. 

At the end of the day I need to make some choices.  But maybe I need to realize that I need to make choices again and again every single day of my life. 

lover i’m on the street

I just spent the last hour confiding in someone I hardly know.  I can’t believe I did that.  I guess I needed to talk to someone.  I made my life sound more flashy than it really is.  Maybe that’s what I hope it seems like and sounds like to other people.  I know that I’m not normal.  Well, I feel like I’m not normal.  I desperately want to feel more normal, and I worry that I am changing myself to feel it. 

I tell myself all the time, I just want to live.  And I do, so I do.  I feel intensely restless, and I’m sure I’ll get through this period of time like I have so many times in the past and I tell myself that everything will be okay and make sense at the end of this.

I met someone awhile ago and I thought he was everything I ever wanted, and so I lived my life to please him.  It wasn’t what he wanted.  And that makes perfect sense to me.  I wouldn’t want someone to decorate and change themselves for me.  I find it interesting that I know so many people who are in relationships and so many people know that it just isn’t the right one.  And yet they stay because they don’t want to be alone.  I guess in a way I can see the logic that their mind might be experiencing, but how awful.  I realize then that though a lot of people are in relationships, it doesn’t mean they’re happy.  It is what it is I suppose. 

I feel really bad because I think the things that I desire so much are universal.  Doesn’t everyone agree with a statement like, I just want to find a mutual somebody who just wants me, who sincerely loves me, who can be himself around me? 

I feel selfish, kinda, expressing that desire.  It doesn’t seem right.  I doesn’t seem right that I should feel like something is out of place in my life when I know full well that countless people feel this way.  And yet my feelings are real…and I haven’t really felt such an urgency about it before this season in my life.  Everyone says that when you just relax and stop watching someone right will waltz into your life.  I’m sure it could happen.  Like I always say, I’ll keep living and enjoying my life as it is (and try to remember to enjoy it as it is in that meantime!) until it takes a turn in the direction I’m hoping for. 

it’s the way you say we could have if you’d done the things you should have

People tell me I have a pretty good attitude.  I do.  I like people; I love life.  Overall I’m really happy.  At the same time, I just hate this time of year–I can’t remember a time when I didn’t, and I’m not sure why.  Perhaps I am truly destined for a career in education and so the end of the academic year is a sad lull for me. 

I’ve been penned up in my office or my house avoiding the precarious weather and listening to depressing music.  It’s okay, I’m like this sometimes.

I’ve said this before, and so it sucks that I am still processing the same stuff.  I find myself having experiences and promising myself, “Okay, no matter what, I will not go around this mountain again; I will get it right this time!”  And yet, I repeatedly make the same mistakes.  It’s in this brief lull before summer gets insane with graduations and transitions that I find myself reevaluating everything and wondering what the hell I’m going to do with my life. 

Because I think happiness is a choice, I think I’ll always be happy.  However, I know that a great deal of life is not all sunshine and roses, and parts of my life will be disappointing.  Maybe I’ll always find this time of the year to be a let down, maybe I’ll keep making the same mistakes.  Maybe I’ll always feel like the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and yet never have the courage to jump the fence.  Maybe culture will never adjust to my whims and I’ll have to keep being flexible or keep fiercely challenging everyone else. 

Like I’ve said before, maybe I’m just aging (or growing?) a little, but man, I would like a little more stability in my life!  Maybe it’s the whole three-year program thing that has me pondering.  I have felt pretty unstructured for some time.  I hate feeling like this! 

When I first left my parents home and attempted life on my own, I think I sincerely thought that one day I would just roll over and my life would make sense.  The more people I meet and the more I live the more I realize that’s delusional!  But I am still tempted to think that way, and yet equally I worry that I am doing something wrong and this is what has caused the dichotomy that I sense of late.  As a result I’m putting pressure (too much, I think) on myself to be someone something that I’m not.  I worry too much about making other people happy or making my life count for something.  I think about big accomplishments like being the first female student affairs professional to stand on her head on the moon rather than on a small scale like getting my homework done responsibly or making my bed periodically.  Maybe, just maybe if I could learn to manage some of the little things in my life these big things wouldn’t ram me in the head so hard during this season of each year.  The little things have never, ever come easily to me and sometimes I think the big things will solve the little ones when actually it’s completely the other way around.  I don’t like to admit this because it makes me feel even more inept.  Sad!  I suppose that this is what it comes down to, though…I need to learn to manage the little things before I can tackle the big ones.

sometimes i get so tense

I’ve been learning some life lessons lately.  If I am honest with myself, I suppose I always am. 

I’m tired.  Learning is exhausting. 

I am in this place where there is so much that I want to say, need to say, would like to talk about, but I just can’t get it out.  I am embarrassed about where I am at in my life.  There, I said it.  This isn’t where I thought I would be, and I have kicked myself and reminded myself that I really am happy, that I really do have something to offer the world (and trust me I do), but when I’m honest with myself I know that I have missed the mark repeatedly!

I feel bad for the people that I have hurt along the way.  I don’t think I could number them all.  The worst part of this is that I have this sense that there are mistakes that I have made that I have repeated.  I go around one mountain, it’s terrible, and I promise myself: I will not go around this mountain again.  A few years later I find myself asking, haven’t I learned this once before?

I shouldn’t be this disappointed.  I should grow up and realize that I can’t grow up, I can’t change or grow or enjoy my life if I don’t make some mistakes.  However, the key is that I need to learn from them.  I have been trying to tell myself (for years, oh sad!) that it’s not going to be this way the next time, and I will be more honest and forthright and I will be myself and I will do my best and I will master the task the job the schedule the relationship, whatever.  I tell myself I can do it up until I’m in the moment, and then I freeze.

FREEZE.

How awful!  I say all the time that I hate (hate, hate!) when I feel powerless in my life.  It happens too frequently.  I get over excited about too many things.  I zero in, I get over-focused, and there is only one thing I want.  Then I don’t get it.  Then I pine and suffer.  Then I promise to not to that the next time.  Then I find something else I want.

Perhaps I lack determination.  Perhaps it is like it was when I was young and people would tell me, man you are lazy!  And yet others tell me, man, you’re ambitious!  Make up your damn mind!

Some things are easier to go after than others.  It’s the hard things that I just want to be able to tackle and I have been completely unable to as of yet.  It’s not necessarily for lack of trying.  It’s a little bit lack of opportunity, maybe, but those opportunities are going to be everywhere in a moment…before I know it. 

I am so tempted to say, “I’m just like everyone else; I only want to be happy.”

I hate that statement.  I think about that a lot though.  I do want to be happy.  I don’t even know what that means, though!!!