2/11/11

So for the first time in a great while I am sitting down at my table to write a post. I figure that if I want to achieve any semblance of mental clarity I must sit down with some regularity and hash out these issues. Tonight, I feel the need to address my growing suspicion that there are few people in Seattle who actually like me. I can't figure out what it is about me that people don't like, but no matter how hard I try I just can't seem to get along with many of them. As usual, I blame my age for part of it, because apparently no one wants to be caught in conversation with a nineteen-year-old. Apart from that, I'm not really sure where to place the rest of the blame. This disconnectedness is doing bad things to my self esteem and it seems the only real fix is to go away. All my attempts at friendliness, at caring, at relation have all failed and continue to fail despite my endless attempts. When I'm stuck behind a counter with the same group of people every day, it'd be nice to relate a little. I didn't think that was asking for too much. But, if its not working it must somehow be my fault. If they don't find me interesting, then so be it. I can't make them like me. And in the end, what else am I supposed to do? Can I just clam up and not talk? It might be best that way honestly, since I seem to be better at listening than talking.
I've always made friends passively. Turning the tables has not worked well for me.
I'm convinced that if I just disappeared from the circles I inhabit here in Seattle, there would be few who would miss me. Really miss me. Perhaps every now and again for a month they would wonder where on earth that awkward, round-faced girl disappeared to, but after a few moments they'd shrug their shoulders and move on.
I'm no role model here. Just another girl who doesn't know the first thing about anything, including herself. I've tried so hard here to find other people, other people who I can relate to, who I can befriend, who like me as much as I like them but nothing has panned out. There seem to be two groups of people who generally find me "interesting"; very small children and men interested in sex. The very small children enjoy me because I entertain them. I like the children the best. They don't discern between the ugly face and the beautiful one. There is not much to be said of the men...they come (literally) in all shapes and sizes with all sorts of charming words and feigned interest. To some extent I believe that it is my numerous bad encounters with such men that make it incredibly difficult to create and maintain a normal, friendly relationship with a man.

I found one man in Seattle who likes me. He is now my boyfriend. And of all the people I know, he makes me feel the most inadequate. Not on purpose, but because of how inherently great he is. I constantly feel like I am living in his shadow, my own endeavors and feats eclipsed by his unintentionally more impressive ones. Everyone I know here knows him as well, and he is hands down the favorite.
Darren has not been showing up at jiu jitsu for more than a few months because of a combination of bad events that kept him away. Meanwhile, I was still showing up and nearly every time I would attend class there would be another person asking me where Darren was, when Darren was coming back, how come we never see Darren anymore. They had a right to ask that question, but after awhile I just didn't have answers anymore and those people looked disappointed in me that I couldn't tell them when he was coming back or why he wasn't around. I keep trying to be friendly to everyone, keep trying to ask them how they are, what's up, but no one seems to want to answer. Is it just me? Do people just not want to tell me how there lives are? I like Darren very much and each moment I spend with him increases my happiness, but each moment is also a reminder of my inadequacy. He is so much more than I am, everything I wish I could be and more. But instead of being my own person, I end up walking on a leash in his shadow, tail between my legs, cowering behind him so no one can see how truly inferior I am. Darren doesn't even know he makes me feel this way.

At this point, I can't really try anymore. Its wearing me down too much and I don't have time to maintain the relationships I try to build. Everything needs time, and I don't have time for everyone and everything.
I suppose the only thing I can afford emotionally right now is to remain passive and hope that somewhere, somehow people who care will show up.

Brainstorming

I'm giving blogging a go on my phone. It's nearly always with me and so it allows me more time to try and write. I had success with it while I was vacationing in Hawai'i, so I see no reason why it won't work at home in Seattle. My teachers used to constantly spout the benefits of brainstorming, but I never believed that it helped. Then again, I never really gave it a chance either. I have since seen its true worth during very rare moments of clarity. So much has happened and is happeningng in my life currently and I have been so completely busy that I have hardly had a chance to write. The less I write, the more the thoughts accumulate, and the bigger the pile, the more stressed out I become. Writing was largely my only emotional outlet for a very long while, and to suddenly be unable to find the time for controlled emotional relief has been unsettling. This whole brainstorming thing is proving helpful, though. By organizing my thoughts and writing them down as they come to me I am actually able to keep myself partially sane. We'll see how this pans out.

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1/13/2011

The more time I spend around people, the less I trust them. Before I moved to the city, I was sure that I didn't put too much trust in anyone. But now that I live in the city and see just how much trust I really did have in everyone. With each passing day, my faith in my fellow man deteriorates and when I look back on years past, I see how much my cynicism has grown.
Relating to people is harder than ever. Its ironic that my nature is to please everyone, yet I cannot relate to anyone. I realized today that I have no passions. I sat down with a stranger to have a cup of coffee and he asked me what my passions, pursuits, and hobbies are. My first thought was fleeting, but cemented a thought that I have been having quite a bit lately; the truth is that I have no passions. Some people are passionate about sustainability, or football, or painting. I am passionate about nothing. There is nothing that I dedicate my time and energy to without rest. And since I do not have any passions, it is hard to find things to talk about with anyone. I don't watch a lot of movies, play a lot of games, read the latest magazines, or even any books. So far, the most consistent thing I dedicate my time to is work. Not because I want to, but rather out of necessity. And I tell myself that I would be doing other, more important things with my time were it not for work, but really...all I would do is find reasons not to start anything. It seems to me that I don't believe in anything enough to pursue it.
And all of it boils down to the perceptions of others. In my effort to please everyone, I again please no one. Not even myself. So instead of pleasing some and being happy with myself, I choose to ruin everything for everyone. I often consider what my worst fear is, and if I had to reduce it down to just one thing, it would be failure. I am so terrified of failure that I cannot start anything. It is almost inevitable that at some point in learning how to do something new that I will fail at it, and my mind cannot handle that apparently.
So now I find myself at a point in life where I have completely stopped. I am not progressing or growing as a person, but rather standing still and letting life continue on with all its opportunities and possibilities.
Each morning I hope to wake up a better person, more prepared and more tolerant of myself, but each morning I wake up with more questions, less answers, and less time.

And again, I feel so distant from everyone lately that I can barely breathe. Why am I so replaceable? Why am I not important to anyone? Why is it that I push away the people who do think I am important? What is the secret recipe for communication that I am missing?
When everyone I know here can turn their back on me in a minute, how can I trust anyone? People constantly show me their colors and the more I see, the less I like. Yet I still want to get to know them. For me, people are irreplaceable. Each one is their own being and there will never be another like them. Sure, there are six billion people on the planet, but each one is someone different than the last. So to place such little value in the relationships presently in your life makes no sense to me. But perhaps I am not as interesting or as different as I like to think. Because it seems to me lately that I can be replaced by anyone at any time. Really, I am no more special to the people around me than a stranger they saw on a bus once. And so why trust anyone, why put any faith in anyone when I know that my days are numbered?
But my sentiments as of late are like a dog chasing its own tail. I am frustrated that I cannot relate to anyone, and so I withdraw, but withdrawing only makes it harder for people to want to get to know me.
But what the hell...
I don't even know anymore. I don't know why I think about these things anymore. They just make me sadder.

12/16/2010

Hello again.
I would like to point out that I tried. Allow me to come to my own defense and direct your attention to the numerous times I tried to write in the past few months.
Ahem:
- October: 4 times
- November: 3 times
- December: 3 times

If all the posts I started were published, there would be a lot more for you all to read. Sadly, I have the unfortunate inability to release anything that hasn't been entirely finished. And what with my lack of time these days, I rarely get around to finishing anything.
For more reasons than one, too...

Slowly but surely, my imagination and my creative spirit are dying. I don't have much faith in anything these days. People are all horrible (myself included), we're messed up, constantly failing, using every minute to pursue useless endeavors that will inevitably result in nothing at the time of our expiration.

So what is worth pursuing? What, at the end of the day, is really worth my effort and dedication?
After all this time asking the same question, I still don't know. I still cannot quite figure it out.
But I think I'm getting closer.
Of all the things I have done thus far, all the things I have tried to learn, tried to devote myself to, the only endeavor that ever seems to feel right is helping other people; if what I do benefits someone else, even if only in a very small way, the hours spent working and sweating seem worthwhile.
Which always leads to the next question; what can I do with that?
What job or career can I involve myself in that will let me accomplish what I want? People have suggested that I become a teacher or something akin to that, but I don't know if I'm up to the challenge.
Which I suppose might mean that I am not really dedicated to helping others. If I can't put in the work necessary, I must not really want to help anyone.

But I don't know.
I don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going, or how anything makes sense these days.
I made the mistake of believing that life would come together like a puzzle over time, with more pieces being filled in as I learned and experienced. Unfortunately, it seems to be the other way around; I had a picture of life, but the longer I'm alive the more the picture doesn't make sense and I keep removing pieces, hoping that I'll be able to put them back together in a way that makes sense. But more choices present themselves as more pieces are removed. Now I don't even know what picture I'm trying to build. There's just a pile of pieces that belong to some fragmented picture of a once concrete view of life.
There was less as a kid; less stress, less money, less worry, less care, less consequence. The world existed on  a much smaller scale and so the input on my picture of life was minimal.

At this point I just want to put the pieces down and go take a walk. Maybe if I come back in a little while, the picture will be clearer.

Over the course of the last few days, I have been working on seeing things. Not just looking at them, but seeing them. There is a massive difference between viewing the larger scene and observing the details within it. It is brilliant.
It makes me want to take pictures again because there really is so much to be seen.

Hah.

All The Beautiful People

The world is full of beautiful people. Or so we perceive. Beautiful faces sprawl across sides of buildings and beautiful bodies lounge on billboards, looking down at the rest of us with that better-than-thou look of superiority. Beautiful people even exist in the flesh, walking down the street, ordering coffee in front of us, sitting across from us on the bus, etc.
Those of us who do not possess the natural (or even feigned) beauty of these individuals feel inadequate. There is such pain and want in the looks of those people who read the magazines filled with the "beautiful" people, and for what reason?

I know I feel inadequate. Not so much compared to the people I see in the magazines, movies, and billboards, but compared to the beautiful people I see walking down the street. The men I know champion these beautiful women as something particularly special, as if the rest of us are some secondary class of woman.
In order to quell these deep feelings of inadequacy, we tell ourselves that these women must not be as funny as we are, or not as intelligent as we are, but when a beautiful women shows up who is everything we are except better, it scares the living hell out of us.
Most times, I feel like I have a limited number of things going for me. I'm not the prettiest, the nicest, the most talented, or the most fun. I'm pretty run of the mill; there aren't any defining parts of my character that make me special.
So when a beautiful person comes along who is funnier, smarter, and nicer than I am, I become immediately secondary.

At this point, I'm wondering why I care. In some ways, I know why. I am not where I should be at this point in life. I am a child surrounded by working professionals; people who, for all intents and purposes, have everything figured out.
And right now, I have nothing figured out. Not a single thing. I feel utterly and completely lost, totally unsatisfied with my life, and confused beyond belief. What is the next step from here? Where am I going? How do I start?

I know myself well enough to know that my most immediate reaction to this overwhelming wave of reminders is depression; I want to lay down and not get up. I want to hide, be forgotten, and fall apart. For the past two days, I've been doing a mediocre job of avoiding this. I've managed to do a few things and stay in a relatively good mood (not without the help of a wonderful boyfriend).
But as I head back to another week of work, I can't help but wonder why I'm doing everything I'm doing. My life is devoid of any meaning or purpose at this point, and it is devastating.

Some large life change is imminent. I don't know what that means exactly, or what it entails, but something has to move forward. Not just change, but change for the better, change in the forward direction. Otherwise I will fall apart.
I am teetering on the edge of a very vast and bottomless chasm, debating the pros and cons of simply falling off.

New Habits Are Hard To Form...

Habits are difficult, all around. Old ones are hard to break, new ones hard to form. The easy ones are the ones you don't need, and the hard ones are the habits that'll change your life.
A long standing habit of mine is doing everything according to the "all or nothing" philosophy. Do it all, or not at all; accomplish everything now, or wait until you can. Unfortunately, this has never worked out nearly as well as I would have liked, and often causes more problems than it alleviates. I remember times (a lot of times) when my parents were totally dumbfounded by my antics; instead of writing part of my paper and getting partial credit, I would write part of my paper and turn none of it in, because I was going to give them a whole paper or no paper at all. Stupid? Yes. But it made sense in my head.
Finally, after so many years of being totally aware of this problem, but postponing the date of fixing it (hurray for procrastination being another favorite pastime of mine) I am addressing it. Everything in my life is piling up because I want to start it and finish it in one fell swoop, rather than spreading it out across several days, weeks, and so on. Thus far, this logic has prevented me from starting two (possibly more) books, sewing the tablecloths at work (I've been avoiding that one for a good month now), getting my driver's license, registering to vote, and an alarmingly large amount of other things.
So. It is time to adjust my behavior. I must start doing little things, little chunks of things in the hopes of actually finishing something in a timely manner. I don't know where this habit came from, or what subconscious experiences it is tied to, but I do know that it needs to change.

Thus far, as anticipated, my new method of operating my life has worked out well. I started one of those books. I started a return on a shipment of herbs that, even though I can't finish it today, is now partially done so that when I come in on Saturday, I will not have to do all the work. Huzzah for improvement.

And instead of thinking up more things to say, as I usually want to, I'm going to leave it at this.
Its a horribly boring "update" for all of you who still read on occasion, but thank you anyway.

The Passage of Time (10/5/10)

The passage of time dulls the pain and bitterness felt in the worst days of one's life. Rage turns to minor annoyance and crushing grief becomes nothing more than a saddening memory. In the midst of those days though, the height and intensity of one's emotions are such that we cannot imagine a time when we will not feel as strongly. But with each passing day another coin is moved on the scale of reason until finally balance is reached. Then, days or weeks or years down the road, those most distressing and angering of moments become just another piece of the puzzle. However, one can seldom cope and understand while still experiencing those things which they despise. It is only the fact that those things lie in the past that provides solace. Knowing that those experiences will never have to be repeated allows one to place them in the back of their mind, where they have little chance of stirring the bearer's mind.
It is an unfortunate scenario though, when those bad memories are given the chance to resurface, fleshed out with all their orginal intensity.
It is times like these, when I hoped to God that everything would work out and I wouldn't have to put up with this same crap again, that I remember why I left as soon as I did. Over the course of a year I had forgotten how absolutely painful these interactions were, and I let myself believe that they had never been quite as bad as I had thought. Yet here I am an entire year later, and we still get along no better than we did before. Still, every word he says makes me want to pull out my hair and scream in anger. I didn't even know it was possible to get along so poorly with any one person until now. I am not perfect, but I find it hard to believe that my behavior is worthy of such treatment...
The hardest part is that nothing can be done. I am in the same position as I was one year ago and every year before that since I was 5. Helpless and controlled, forced to respond well to the only voice that makes me feel such anger. I don't want to have this kind of relationship, but again I am reminded that it can be no other way because regardless of the effort I put forth I am rewarded with chastisement.
I have had about all I can stand and I know that I have not even received the worst of it yet.