Do you ever reach a point in your life where you feel like you are running your ass off on the hamster wheel but still watch everyone pass you by? That's how I feel right now... and it's annoying as hell.
I'm not in the dark, deep, depressed state that I get into every once in awhile on a rainy day; but I do feel like a toy train that has slipped its track while its wheels still turn and turn... and turn. I know that everyone gets into ruts and that sooner or later most people manage to crawl their way out of them but this is way more than just your typical rut, this is the mother load of them all, this is a meaning of life rut.
While no Rhodes Scholar, I know that I am an intelligent, well educated woman who possesses a certain girl-next-door charm. In high school I dreamed of becoming someone and had a ten year plan sketched out in my mind, I had a purpose, a goal. I wanted to leave my own mark on this planet and change the lives of countless people; I was just missing the small detail of how to accomplish this - and that's what I figured college was about. Then college happened and I was left in my dorm room watching other women head off to parties at the local coed schools and wondering how I ended up being such an outcast. Not to mention that MoHo made me feel like a backwoods (un)educated idiotic redneck... a feeling I had not felt prior to my first semester of college and one I did not enjoy.
So I ran, or at least tried to. Fast forward 4 years and two more colleges and I finally had my BA... and was even more lost than I was when I started my path towards a secondary education. I keep wondering now where I went wrong while also cursing fate that it would provide me with the love of literature and the idea of being a writer but none of the talent needed to achieve it. Which is fine, but it would be nice to have the slightest inkling about what my role during my short time on this earth is supposed to be. So far my 27 years have not amounted to much: no career, minimal friendships with people I rarely see, no great love - just a mountain worth of debt and a lonely existence in my one bedroom apartment where I hold a very strong love affair with my DVR.
Yet the more I reflect on where I came from the more I realize that I have ALWAYS been lost and an outcast and not in the black sheep misunderstood angst ridden teen way. My social outcast issues are far more serious because they fall under the blanket of that the vast majority of people I meet do not want to spend time with me. While I value the close friendships I do have odds are if you called me on a Friday night you'll find me at home in my pjs watching TV because no one called to ask me to go anywhere. And if I cannot develop a social circle how the hell am I supposed to network in the business world? I can't sell something that no one wants to buy into even on a casual level. This coming June I will have been out of high school for 10 years... and that plan I had back then? The only part I have accomplished is living on my own. 17 year old me thought I would be married with a great career and planning for a first child by the time I was 27. I have failed my teenage self... and that's such a painful feeling.
Over the summer I told a friend that I was taking a break from the game (of boys) because I kept making bad decisions. He told me that I could tell myself all I wanted that that was why things weren't working out as planned but my real reason for taking a time out was because I had lost my confidence and that I needed to get it back. How can you get something back that you never had in the first place? Every time I jump in to bed with someone I climb out of it less sure of myself. But when I take a step out of the circle instead of being left unsure I'm just left being lonely with pent up sexual frustrations. Maybe my confidence has suffered a staggering blow but there's no one around telling me how amazing I am to help speed the healing process along so at this rate nothing will ever change.
Every day I crave the lives others live, wishing I could be even just a small percentage like them, however, being left on the outside for so many years can only breed discontent. I hate those who have a happy, fulfilled life that they share with a partner. I envy those with big enough balls to shrug off the repressions of modern society to walk to the beat of their own drummer on a quest to develop a deeper understanding of who they are and what their role is.
I'm beginning to think that I really need to start talking to someone, a professional, who can help me dust off the muck that has gathered on me to reveal the diamond that is inside. But something far greater than the lack of insurance and money to cover the years of therapy I'd need is keeping me from starting to do some research on finding a psychologist that will fit my needs - and that's body freezing, breath stopping fear of what that person might uncover in my psyche. What if it's determined that I'm a hopeless case? That all I can expect from life is what I'm getting right now, that I'm not cut out to join in the dance and must find a way to content myself with my role of being on the sidelines for as long as my heart keeps on beating. If that's my role I don't know if I want to continue, maybe it would be for the greater good for me to, as Shakespeare put it, "shuffle off this mortal coil".
Perhaps Christopher McCandless had the right idea all along and he should not be mourned with sad comments about him starving to death alone in the wilderness of Alaska or ridiculed about how idiotic he was to think he could survive without the basics for survival or the knowledge of the area. Perhaps he should be praised for the urge to shrug off all that is comforting and familiar to trek out and discover who he truly was as a person. Then again maybe it was just a romantic nature based suicide plot and instead of soul searching McCandless was running from having to face his own fears about life; in the end only he knows why he went off into the wild and returned in a body bag. It must have been a beautiful backdrop to have your last visions of though.
Running away and ending things seems such an easy solution when the world is falling down around you...
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3 comments:
This is a tough one. Since I first found your blog, I enjoyed the quirky voice to it. It was interesting to see that girls like you existed, not just as a character on "Sex and the City", or the Diaries books.
Despite your best efforts to make the audience think you had the worst life, there was always a sense that things weren't as bad as they seemed. The humor was almost British, and that your condition brought a little bit of a smile to your face. Besides, you still had your health.
Then you post this. Hopefully this is you just venting from a rough weekend, and you needed to "explore the space". If it was a real cry for help, I suggest that you actually take it upon yourself to find that help, and not rely on the wonderfully anonymous Internet to supply it to you.
Your option of suicide (yes, I said it: suicide), is cowardly. Suck it up, explore all the options you have have available to you, and get your shit in order. Otherwise you're a coward. A weak, selfish, greedy, little coward.
As much as you want us to belive that you have no friends, and the worst family in the world, there are people in your life that will support you, and give you the help you need... if you let them. Maybe friends aren't calling you because you don't want them to. Maybe your family is there, doing what they can to love you, but you're making it difficult. At some point, you need to let go of your foolish pride and admit that there are some things in life you can't beat on your own.
Whatever it takes for you to get back to the place you were last week, last month, or last year, you need to do it. I'm not saying that you need to change your life and become a pretty little princess, just get away from the person in your head that thinks a warm bath with a toaster is a good idea. At least you'll have more time to figure everything else out.
I'll be the first to admit that I use the written word to work through my thoughts so they come out sounding much worse than they really are. And instead of keeping an old school diary I prefer to vent my thoughts to anyone who chooses to actually read my words when they stumble upon them. Which is an irony since in person I'm a very shy gal until I get to know people. An ex told me once that I'm the type of person in a new social setting that will sit back and observe everyone, taking it all in barely saying anything until I've figured out the dynamic and then I'll join in.
I do like to think I have the dark British sense of humor and try to always see the "funny" in even the darkest of situations. But I am the type of person who is highly competitive when it comes to life and hate to feel like I'm way behind the curve. Now I'm not saying I'm the only person in their late 20s who has yet to have a real adult relationship, is still single, and who hasn't found their career niche in the greater world yet. But like Ally McBeal said in an episode, my problems are more important than everyone else's because they're mine. I'm also very impatient and the whole thought of once you stop looking for it, it will happen doesn't work for me.
My thoughts on therapy is that everyone should go, no matter how sane you think you are, no matter how perfect you think your life is there's always room for improvement. Isn't that part of the equation for the meaning of life? If we spent our life without changing and growing at all there would be no point to everything else. I think it's brave of me to say I'm scared shitless to open that trap door of my mind - the psyche is a very dangerous Pandora's box that I'm not ready to open yet - but one day I will be.
As for thoughts of suicide - there was a point in time where I thought that people who took their own life were cowards. Then I went through my own span where I came close to killing myself a handful of times. I'm talking going into my Dad's gun cabinet and loading a pistol, feeling the weight in my hands almost, not some silly teenager who swears they almost committed suicide when they only went so far as "woe is me" thoughts. In retrospect my life sucked hard core for a few years but none of it was worth killing myself over.
My reference to suicide in my blog post was an aside, not a sincere thought. I do not wish that dark place on (almost) anyone let alone do I want to go back into it. More importantly, I know now to ask for help from my friends and have learned to see the beauty in even the saddest of moments.
God I sound like a freakin Hallmark card. As much as I am a black & white person (I hate grey areas), suicide is a grey area for me. I believe that in some cases it is as you said a weak, cowardly act. Yet I don't think that is across the board. And to make my point perfectly clear I am not even going near the road of suicide bombers and the like (that's too much of a dangerous topic and one I don't think you can really say you understand unless you grew up in that belief system). Perhaps it's because I've walked a mile in that shoe that I look at it differently. It'll probably be an agree to disagree topic but I hold firm to my ideas on suicide.
We'll stay off the topic of family because in my mind they are just the chorus in my life, nothing more. My friends are my real family because the true ones would never put me through what my real family did in the name of love. Emotional abuse is just as damaging as physical - and in some cases far more permanent. I know it's shaped how I deal with stressful or tense situations (and my coping skills suck).
My friends are great and some of them I count myself lucky to have in my life. But in the end there are many nights when I've had a shitty day/week and all I need is to talk to someone and no one answers their phones. So I blog, it's my friendly ear listening to me that will never be too busy for me. This is also part of the reason why I don't ask for help, I've spent too many years saving myself I don't know how to go about asking someone else to share the load with me. God help the poor boy who I finally let completely in, he's gonna have to be a strong one.
Call it a rainy day post while I am in a funk I'll be back to blogging about boys I've seen naked and giving them what I like to think are witty nicknames for me in no time... well not the boys part 'cause I've taken myself out of the game but you get the idea.
And don't worry, I enjoy being the dark & twisty ironic girl, I will never be a pretty little princess. :-) Nor do I want to be, life is far more interesting when the roses have some thorns. Besides, the princess wouldn't have signed up for an intro to pole dancing class (not stripper pole dancing just good girl acting a little naughty pole dancing) like I have. Yup I'm off to my first one tonight and I'm psyched.
Clearly I forgot my manners.
Thanks for reading, I'm glad that you're enjoying my ramblings. I like to think of myself as a living, breathing Carrie Bradshaw/Bridget Jones. Minus the chain smoking and with red hair instead of blonde that is.
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