Quick 'un

Just a short one tonight. I figure its better to get something done than nothing at all.

I wonder if there will ever be another time in my life when I am not constantly going somewhere. Things that never used to bother me are suddenly less pleasant than they once were, and it seems mostly due to the fact that I am on my way to do something.
For example, as I was walking home from the bus stop this evening, it was raining. As I walked, the rain fell harder...and harder...and harder. And every time it picked up the tempo, I found myself getting a little more frustrated.
I find that I am constantly engaged in the battle to not be stressed out. Not because its difficult for me to relax, but because I hardly see a need to be stressed out and so I do my best to avoid it. Unfortunately, I get caught up in the myriad of things I have to do, and sometimes find myself being a little more serious than I'd like. And usually I can tell when I need to simmer down when I start getting pissed off by stuff like rain.
I like the rain. Its part of the reason I moved to Seattle. And I like the clouds that it falls out of, those big dark monsters that always look so full of life. So, when I was on my home from work, and the rain landing on my already disheveled hair started to make my brow furrow, I paused my thought process for just a moment and asked myself why on earth the rain would upset me. I was planning on taking a shower anyway. And its not like I had anywhere special to go. So instead, I enjoyed the rest of my walk getting slightly wet and being shoved by the occasional playful gust of February wind.
Things are nice when you take a step back and remember that life is not all seriousness all the time. In fact, it should rarely be serious. Everything is enjoyable if you let it be.

Moving Forward...

Okay, so I admit that some of my conclusions were rather hasty.
Let's review:
"There seem to be two groups of people who generally find me "interesting"; very small children and men interested in sex."
That's not entirely true. Several days after writing that, I really analyzed all of my relationships with men and found that there are in fact a wide variety of reasons they associate with me. It is oftentimes the case that when I am most hopeless, everything appears in high contrast, black and white the only shades I see. All the grey that the true picture is composed of is washed out and I allow myself to distort reality.
My life has returned to a relative state of stability for the time being.
When I took a closer look at the past few months and the mounting stress that was enveloping my sanity, I picked out a couple key instigators.
My life had essentially stagnated. I was not moving forward, just working. And I am not to a point where I can devote my life to work and be satisfied. Especially when that work is coffee and tea. Neither are really things I see myself making a career out of. Within the last week I have started looking at a community college in the area, and just that little effort alone has given my life perspective again. Challenge and sacrifice are the spice of life.

Again, when I reviewed my relationships and everyone I know and love, it became apparent that I was tricking myself into believing I had no friends. There are people who love me, and those people are the friends I made whilst being myself. This journey in Seattle has opened a lot of doors within myself, and thus far the most consistent lesson I have learned is that nothing is more important than being myself. Really, I do not have to please everyone, and I can make most of my decisions on my own. I value other's opinions, but it is not them that shape me, but I who shape myself. Separating myself from those around me has been difficult, because I so badly wanted to assimilate when I got here that I lost track of my individuality.
There is incredible vitality in being one, being separate, like one marble in whole bag. There are many pieces that make up the whole, each individual, but all together.

Suffice to say, things don't seem quite as bad these days. I just need to keep moving forward.

2.15.11

I am tempted to let the positivity of the last two days elevate my mood, but my want of happiness is quickly eclipsed by the steadfast reality that I am not alright. As it so often goes, life responds to my cries of desperation with a grand display of all its best treasures, allowing me to believe for one small moment that there is still a reason to hope. And as I reach up to grasp the hand that will pull me from my pit of angst, it pulls away just before our fingers touch. The delicate Spring bud emerging from Winter's withered remains shrivels and dies, the casualty of a swift and spiteful frost.
I have been left hobbled too many times by my eagerness to trust, more vulnerable in my fresh hope than at the deepest point of my depression; at the bottom of the hole, there is nowhere left to go. It is the slip of a hand or foot, the plunge after ascendancy, that leaves me feeling beaten. For the first time in my life, sleep does not cure my infected psyche of its many and varied demons. There have been less than half a handful of times when I have laid down to rest an absolute wreck and opened my eyes to find myself in no better condition than twelve hours earlier. Those times scared me nearly to the point of panic -- what if this was the beginning of something permanent and irreversible, a constant state of dissatisfaction and utter hopelessness? Thankfully my recovery never took more than a few days and I returned to my condition of relative happiness with nothing more than a couple scratches.
But here...here I am lost and my delicate mind is tossed about like a child in a crowd. The city is not like a small town. These are the places where hearts harden and people lose faith in each other.
In many ways this is my lowest point.

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.