second thoughts have me got me thinking it over; maybe we’re in too deep

I feel a little like I have been sucked in to some kind of parallel vortex where I can only selfishly think of myself.  I feel like I am rowing a boat that is being sucked into a whirlpool.  Yikes.

I was thinking earlier today that if I had to come up with a metaphor for the soul that I would describe it as a cross between a toilet and a whirlpool.  Looking down from high enough distance one begins to see a lot of the same stuff swirling around in circles repeatedly.

I was reading through some past entries here and was perplexed at how often I actually repeated exact phrases time and time again thinking I was eloquent or that I was really breaking through something in my life.  The more I age the more I think that I am a bumbling idiot in some ways…at the same time, maybe I just need to revisit things in order to learn.  It seems wildly unfair, but no kid learns to walk after falling just once.

I have fallen a lot of times recently, and this last time I have not felt like getting up.  Parts of my life keep moving and other parts are just so discouraged it feels like this is it.  But it is never “it”.  Thank God there is always more to life.  Just like this, just like now, just like every other thing in my life that has sucked, I will get through this too.  I am an adult, I am capable, and damn it I am amazing. 

Yikes.  I hate to admit this, but I won’t lie.  I have been feeling just a little desperate lately.  I am not getting any younger as the days go by and I am sick and tired of laying awake wondering.  My friend was telling me recently about this girl that she knows…her desperation has in a way taken over her life, and seems like such a unique person, why would she give up like that? 

There are moments where my head is on perfectly straight and I say to myself, hey, you are going to get through this, it’s just weird, things are going to be fine and you’ll see that you are a human being just like any other who goes through things. 

I hate this situation because I made myself promises I didn’t keep.  And I have to forgive myself so that I can live with myself, but damn, I don’t want to.  I just want to find myself and throw her against a wall and beat the hell out of her until she believes me that LOOK–it is okay to be yourself, to live your life, to enjoy your job, to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF in the way the you deserve to be cared for.  There are things over which you have complete control because you have free will.  At the same time there are things over which you have zero control and you must learn to differentiate between them.  Relax!  For the love of everything that could ever be good in your life, just relax!

A friend of mine called me recently and wanted to talk about how life is going.  He and I don’t see eye to eye, on anything.  This is frustrating.  He sees me as being very supportive and loving, and that’s true, I do love him, we’ve been friends forever, and he’s a sweet man, he’s just scared of life.  He’s scared of himself really becoming something that he wants to be one day.  And I want to SHAKE him and say, seriously–LIVE!  Choose to do something!  Stop waiting for life to just fall in your lap!  She won’t!

And so lately I can’t sleep because I feel responsible for him.  I want him to be happy.  But I can’t make him happy.  He has to choose happiness.  Like I have to choose things in my own life.

Funny how I can always see other people’s issues but I am completely blind to my own.  There is so little I understand.  But at the same time, I have to ask myself:  why can’t I just look at him and realize the same things I keep telling him–you really can change this.  You just need to CHANGE it.  He and I both need to learn to understand that there has always been a classic difference between saying and DOING.

breaking up is hard to do

I am still sad.  I feel pathetic.

hey baby they’re playing our song

As long as I can remember I have always felt this deep connection to music.  I can hear a song and it will make me think of something 20 years ago, or yesterday, or something I thought I had forgotten. 

Now that I’m grown I may not always remember certain things that happened awhile back, or when I was a kid, or whatever, but I find that when a certain song comes on I am brought back to that very moment…I can remember the emotions or situations or words said with distinct detail.

When I was young and stupid (and unjaded and not as proud) I used to listen to music and daydream about what occasion or moment that song would be perfect for.  A father-daughter dance, an anniversary, a fight, a reunion, birth, graduation, revenge…what have you.

I am listening to the radio today and this song came on.  I hadn’t heard it before, but as I listened I realized that I was a lot more familiar with a cover of the song.  I was instantly brought back to specific moments and conversations I had with someone in my life, and thought about (again), oh why didn’t we just work out?  In other words, it was like breaking up again, I guess.

I know I am not the first or last person to have such an experience, but man, do I ever still feel really pathetic right now.

but we’ll have to leave them in the past

At some point in my life I have to grow up and realize that not everything is going to turn out the way I want it to.  I have made some choices in my life that have caused me to struggle and regret, then promise that I’ll just have to do it another way, or better next time, or whatever.

I met someone awhile back and we didn’t work out.  He married (I’m sure) a lovely woman, and I really do hope they are happy.  I don’t always feel great about how that turned out, but I’m grateful that I can keep learning and live my life the way I want to.  At the same time I’m sorry that I didn’t communicate better in that relationship because perhaps it may have gone differently.

I am still a little disappointed about that, well, not that, but I worry about whether or not I have really learned from it.  I have met others and repeated that same mistake a couple of times.  I have begun to wonder, am I purposely sabotaging myself?  Perhaps.  A lot of people do that sort of thing, and I’m sorry that I feel like I may be one of them. 

This really strange thing happened to me several months ago and I didn’t know how to respond to it.  Again and again I have wished that I could have those moments back, but I am an adult and I know I can’t have a time machine and in some ways I don’t know that I would actually want one.  I wish I knew how I could become more comfortable and realistic and be able to just tell someone what I really want in my relationships.  Too often I think I keep people guessing or expect them to read my mind when in reality they can’t, they’ll never be able to, and at the end of the day I repeatedly wonder why my heart is broken. 

This break, like every other, I will get over.  I sincerely hope that there is a day ahead of me when I will be able to say what I need to say when I need to say it, and the days will end when I say, “well, at least I learned something from this.”  Enough learning, I would like now to put that knowledge into practice!

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!!!   

when it’s through, it’s through

I am so sad.  I can tell myself all day long that I shouldn’t be.  But I am horifically sad.  I think I could shed a tear, and over something so stupid!  But feelings are real and I have them, and I’ll choose for this moment to be thankful that I have them. 

makin’ me crazy wonderin’ where you are

If two weeks ago you would have told me a couple of things that were about to happen to me, I would have laughed in your face with such gusto you would have completely blown over.  But some things have happened lately.  It’s been interesting. 

I am hoping for a lot more moments like this forthcoming.