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not to be 12 but it feels weird when you go from being someone’s close friend to being their not so close friend and they’re closer to someone else and you all hang out but you feel weird and left out a lot and that this happens at this age also is weird

I was feeling a lot better than I have in a while and then this hurricane happened and sent be backwards. I should be volunteering and helping, but I honestly haven’t been in any sort of space to be around anyone lately but the few people I call mine. The few people I don’t have to try around. Over the weekend, an old coworker reached out to be and we had coffee and caught up. She told me about the company she’s working for now and wanted me to send her my resume. I sat in front of this screen and felt paralyzed trying to update my resume. Update it. Not redo it, not reformat it, not make it awesome, just update it. It took me HOURS and a pep talk from one of my best friends via text for me to get it done. What kept going through my head went something like this: I am lazy. I am feeling sorry for myself. I am having a months long pity party and I have to stop. People lost everything and I can’t even use my resources to do anything. Why am I not doing more? I am stupid. Over and over again. Spiraling. Logically, I know I’m capable and not stupid. I know that in the last year or so my anxiety has reached a new level where taking care of myself has to be a priority and sometimes taking care of myself means sleeping it off or not talking to anyone. But the problem is, there’s a fine line between taking care of myself and feeling bad and wallowing in it? I did send my old coworker my resume. I did the one thing I needed to do and I felt ok about it. I didn’t feel great about it because my resume isn’t as clean or concise as I’d like it to be. But the reality is this: nothing is ever going to be EXACTLY the way I want it to be. I’m not saying that to be down on myself. My brain is constantly picking everything apart. Even when everything is fine or good. My relationship for example: not in the best place. To go from living together to living apart from having jobs to not having jobs, we are both going through things. So what makes some days harder than others? What makes me question everything on one day and totally fine with it the next? Do I want to talk more? Yes. Am I aware that we don’t have much to say right now because life is hard? Yes. Is that ok? Today I feel like it is ok. Yesterday I felt like it wasn’t ok. So I get frustrated and upset and I feel unloved.

This hurricane came so close to coming here and destroying this house and the houses of people I care about so much. With every disaster that happens anywhere there’s always a sense of we are so lucky or I feel so bad for them. In this case, they are so close to us. They are us. They could have easily been us. And I should be helping! I should be at the shelter volunteering. But at this point when the idea of the destruction is literally making me cry, what good is that in a disaster situation? A really odd version of survivors guilt or something? I don’t know. It isn’t productive. So much of my day to day feels unproductive and sad. BIG PICTURE this time with my friends and family is a good thing! I’ll figure this out. It’ll be ok. We’ll be together again soon and things will be different in a good way and I am so looking forward to that. But right now, in this moment, I’m hanging on just barely to anything I can. I’ve stopped sleeping a normal sleeping schedule. I used to go to bed around 10 and wake up around 6 or 7. Now I stay up for no apparent reason. My allergies are bad or I get a headache and I end up napping at weird times. This morning I woke up to awful music my nephew was listening to, at 5:30. Which normally wouldn’t be a big deal but I am tired today.

I found this list recently, like a you’re not ok do things to be ok kind of list and I’m reading it almost daily. Did I shower in the last day? No. I’ll do that now. Have I eaten in the last 3 hours? No. I’ll do that now too. Is there something I need to do right now? Yes. Let’s make that the one thing I focus on and finish. Even if it’s a resume I’m not stoked about.

Last night my dad printed out some assignments that were on some website. High school must be a lot harder nowadays because parents have access to SO MUCH information. When I was in high school, I remember having a really low grade in AP Art History, it was a 26% or something like that. It was SUPER out of character for me to let a grade slip like that. I liked the class, but it was HARD. I love art but I’ve never been great at remembering things aka history so it was a challenge. One day my teacher called me up to her desk and told me I was failing. I told her I would be fine. I was fine. I ended up getting a C I think? And I passed the AP exam. The point is, my parents never had to know about me having the most ridiculous grade ever. If we’re comparing, I have and always will be concerned with what my parents think of me. My goal, although misguided at my age, is usually to make them proud. My self-worth is instantly demolished by the idea of them being disappointed in me. My nephew is different than I was and will always be different than I am. To some extent, I envy how brazen he is. He looked at the assignments and told my parents that the teacher gives one assignment and then changes her mind and puts other things online. I mean, come on. The teacher decides to purposely mess with all of her students and secretly assign things that she never assigned? Right. AND THEN my dad mentioned going to meet with the teacher and he still didn’t waver in his conviction. He was right. She was wrong. My dad, also wrong. If it were me, I would have looked and acted like a scolded dog. I would’ve admitted I hadn’t seen that assignment before. It’s a weird thing to witness, a high schooler in a different decade. It wasn’t THAT long ago that I was walking those same halls, but it was. Some days I want to yell at him and my parents and say IT IS HARD TO GET INTO COLLEGE NOW IT IS NOT LIKE IT WAS! YOU’RE RUINING IT FOR YOURSELF! But I keep my comments to myself. I try to be helpful, but most of the time it’s just seen as criticism. Whether they admit it or not, they want to prove they can parent differently. They want to succeed. They want to not sweat the small stuff. They want to prove it can be done.

Well that was rambling at its finest been up for a couple hours and just want to sleep more kind of rambling.

get well soon

Not too long ago I was in a new city trying to make friends. A coworker was having a birthday gathering at a bar across town and I decided I would go. I had to psych myself up to go. I didn’t feel confident about using public transportation to get there, so I decided to splurge on an uber there. I remember the anxiety I felt walking into that bar and how relieved I was once I saw some coworkers. I remember feeling excluded, but telling myself to be patient and to try. I didn’t want to drink too much so instead of another beer I got a Coke. I was making conversation with the girls and dancing and eating cake. I stepped away to use the restroom and when I got back to the table everyone was gone. I sat there for a while before I got up the nerve to text the birthday girl, and she responded nonchalantly that they left to go somewhere else. The feeling I felt in that moment was one that I’ve probably felt before, but I can’t remember feeling it outside of that moment. I told myself that we weren’t really friends and it wasn’t really a big deal, called an uber and went home. Not feeling that disappointment again basically meant I wouldn’t try to be friends with anyone new again. It goes completely against my nature to not try to be friends with people I’m attracted to. I instantly feel a connection with certain people and I go for it. My problem is that I let them guide the friendship / relationship from the start. What I think is easy-going and fun is really passive and easy to manipulate. I sat at bars and listened to a girl go on and on about her boyfriend and their problems without her asking me a single question. It’s a pattern I repeat over and over again. And that feeling! That feeling of disappointment, of failure, of insecurity.. It creeps up on me in different situations, in different cities, but it’s always the same. It paralyzes me. It stops me from sending a text message. It stops me from applying for a job. It makes me commit to plans I don’t want. There’s this scarcity that comes along with that feeling, like they’ll be my only friend and this will be my only chance. This is the only job, so there’s no way I’d get it anyway and there’s so many more qualified people. There’s so many other people they can make plans with so I have to do this. It’s crazy. It’s nonsensical. It anxiety. It’s debilitating. It’s motivating. It’s paralyzing.

When I was in high school, there were a lot of times when it seemed like everyone I knew had plans but me. That’s something that most people know about me. What I’m not sure anyone knows is that once I had my license, there were a lot of times that I would get ready and get in the car and drive to the commons and walk around or just drive around Destin or Niceville. I would tell my parents I was going to meet up with someone, but the truth was, I didn’t have any plans. I think part of me hoped that I would bump into someone I knew and I would feel really adult when I would pretend to be running to a store for something. I think a bigger part of me hoped that someone would call me when I was out, and we would meet up, and the lie I told my parents would be true. What all that means now is I feel a lot of those same feelings more often than I would like to admit. I send the how are you texts when I haven’t seen someone in a while, but I hardly ever get those texts. I’m the conversation starter. I’m not in an unbearable situation. I wouldn’t be surprised if even 6 months from now I look back and think wow that time with my family was so precious. But right now, if I’m completely honest with myself, I’m not ok and I am having a hard time. People are having hardER times. People are busy. I get it. I do get it. But I also seem to always be the one who GETS it. Sometimes I don’t want to be the one who gets it. I want someone else to be the one. I miss my boyfriend terribly. Most people would break up. But I just keep thinking about the fact that a lot of the time when I feel this way, I don’t really want to talk to anyone. I keep thinking about how one of my favorite things about the last 4 years of my life, about my relationship, is not talking but being next to each other. I think I really miss that a lot right now. I just miss being close. Not to say that the problems aren’t real and that we don’t have things to talk about and work though, because we definitely have enough of that. I have spent my entire life trying to make people proud of me, to make them like me, to make them want to be the ones that reach out to me or make plans with me. My parents, my friends, my boyfriend.. How many times have I driven across town to see a friend? How many times have I moved for my boyfriend? How many times have I wanted to get my shit together, not for myself, but for my parents? It’s all the problem, really. I don’t know what to do with myself because I’ve never taken the time to figure that out for me in the first place. I’ve been along for the ride, but I’ve never actually put my hands on the wheel.

Yesterday I kept checking to see if the videos I made for the first day of summer were posted. It’s no longer my job to check these things. I kept debating whether or not I would reach out to someone about it and ultimately decided not to. It’s a weird place to be in. I don’t regret my decision to leave, but it’s taking some time for me to come to terms with it. It’s been 9 days. Which feels like a long time even though I know it’s not. My ego is also bruised. I hate it. But it’s true. I take pride in doing a good job, and for someone to swoop in, even before I left, it felt awful.

I’m trying to compartamentalize everything going on right now. There’s a lot that isn’t even mine, but it’s still sad. It’s still hard.

I feel bad about not doing more right now. More for myself, more for the people I care about who are going through things. I know things aren’t going to fall into place. I know I have to figure things out for myself. I know that once I do that, I’ll feel better and things will be better.

I’m still adjusting to a lot of changes. I still miss my boyfriend. I still worry. But I’m trying to be understanding. Not everything is about me. Doesn’t make anything easier.

I don’t want to beat myself up over anything right now. I want to be patient. I want to let myself process things. I want to figure out what I want and what I need. I want to find a job. At the same time, I want a break. Even if that doesn’t make sense. Even if that makes me spoiled. I just want to do things that make me happy for a little while. If I don’t, I think I might break down.

frankocean

in the late nite

I have to stop complaining. I also have to get a job. It’s terrible how easy it is for me to be ok with having so little on my plate. Somehow having nothing on my plate but finding a job can STILL be overwhelming to me and I have to get up and get over it already. I’ve had time to adjust to being here, I’ve had time to process what is going on in my life right now. I have to stop being disappointed in myself and DO something about it. I care too much about how things are perceived by other people and I let the idea of what people think affect how I feel about everything. The reality is, everyone is too busy with their lives to even think about what I’m doing. So why do I care?

On a religious note: my parents are Christians. Growing up, we were Catholic for some time and then we all kind of stopped. It was a gradual thing, we stopped participating in the church as a whole. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, my parents became Christians. I wasn’t a part of this, really. I went to church and youth group and I always saw myself as a Christian, but the reality is I’ve hardly read the Bible. We just didn’t grow up immersed in faith. We prayed. We weren’t allowed to skip church, but it all ended there. This house is now a pretty Christian household. Sometimes I hear my parents qualify/describe people as Christians. I often hear them say things like God gave them a thought or showed them the way. These are things I’ve literally never heard before. (Besides a brief time in my life where my parents were worried about my salvation in my mid-twenties, everything else was pretty secular.) So it is a little confusing to me that when I appear surprised, my parents seem offended or shocked by it. It seems that through their eyes, it’s always been this way in this house. They no longer question me about why I’m not going to church with them on Sunday mornings, and I’m so grateful for that because it is truly the only time I have completely to myself. I try my best to be respectful, but it can be hard. They are conservative in their politics and in their belief system, and I’m not. They’re protective of their faith and their rights, yet not really super understanding of others. I haven’t had a bad experience with Christianity, but I guess I never felt completely welcomed in church or with Christians in general. I always kind of labeled myself a Christian anyway because I do pray and I do believe in a version of God. But what I’ve come to realize recently, after talking to my boyfriend who was raised Christian in Christian schools and with the Bible, is that I don’t actually know much about Christianity. I can’t really label myself as something like that.

My parents are really incredible people. They happen to be Christians. They happen to create a world view with that lens. I think that they did their best, and it was also a pretty good job, when it came to raising my brother and I. Now they are raising my nephew and they are doing it through that lens. They don’t seem to see that they really didn’t do that with me or my brother. My brother and I are totally different people so I can’t really speak for him.. but as far as I’m concerned, my parents taught me to love everyone. My parents taught me to be accepting and understanding and compassionate. They taught me to not use any kind of qualifiers for people, whether they meant to or not. So it is hard for me sometimes to overhear conversations and see how limiting using that lens can be, at least from my perspective.

Suddenly, you go from being a child to being older and having your own world view. And part of that is the fine line between respecting your parents and seeking that same respect in return. I don’t ever try to be dismissive of their faith, ever. But it is new to me and it is hard for me to use a lens on the world I’ve never used and probably won’t ever use.

I hate contradictions in anything. It’s the super basic thing that bothers me about most divisive topics.

Yesterday was a rough day. I kept it together for maybe half of the day, but then I just let it get me. Valentine’s Day is silly! It is. It is silly. But for me my parents always fuss over me and it’s always been a day I’ve liked. I can’t help that I LOVE FLOWERS and CARDS and CANDY. I just LOVE it. This time away from my boyfriend, it’s really hard. We’re both really struggling right now. And we aren’t good at distance, we never have been. It’s been really lovely to have this person to celebrate each Valentine’s Day for the last few years. Yesterday was hard. I need the words sometimes. I need the reminders. I need him.

Valentine’s Day is super super cheesy. I’m an adult and I know and understand that. But my parents were always really awesome at making it about love, not just about their love for each other, but their love for me and the love we all have for everyone we’re close to. I never really had boyfriends? And when I did they were super lame and did things like send me an orchid in a pot when I really love a nice bouquet. Anyway, my boyfriend and I have spent more Valentine’s Days apart than together. I miss him a little more on a day that is meant to celebrate love, even if it’s cheesy. I feel really lucky that all the Valentine’s Days where I felt a little lame not having someone have lead to having someone really amazing, and genuinely loving the card he’ll send me more than any flower on the planet.

This is a really, really difficult time for me. I know it’s harder for my boyfriend. As much as I miss him right now, I’m just beyond grateful to have two really beautiful best friends and a really great family here.

‘I’ve made a habit of this kind of thinking, of considering myself the periphery to everyone else’s busy, friend-filled orbit. But the more I talked it out, the more I understood where ideas like that come from in all their varied, misshapen forms. If childhood insecurities scar us into adulthood, modern media seems to only deepen those wounds. Every day on our social feeds, we watch as people publicly curate their lives, feeding a constant stream of invisible omissions which, while understandable, present a false reality. Movies and shows don’t help either, with their charming ensemble casts that meet twice a week — once for brunch, once for drinks. Who’s living like that? Add to all that the recent focus on female friendships in the mainstream which, although wonderful for many reasons, has also given what are complex, messy relationships a sort of invincible, performative sheen. Maybe some people really do have that perfect, evergreen kind of friendship, but I would guess it’s less common than we think.’

It’s a little hard sometimes to put things into perspective. A few years from now I will remember days like today. When I went shopping with my mom and watched cute animal videos with my dad. When I stormed into my teenage nephew’s room after hearing something offensive and told him that it was actually not funny at all. When I listened to my grandpa shuffle his feet on the carpet by my room. These moments that are often overshadowed with a small annoyance or the stress of the unknown, a few years from now when things are stable and it is hard to have days like today, I’ll miss them.

I came across an old notebook from a writing class I took in college and I was blown away by some of the things I wrote. I want to know that part of myself again, if it’s still there.

I had a total breakdown today. My eyes hurt and I’m so tired. I need to find a job and do a million other things. It’s just a lot. All of it is a lot.

I miss the silence.

Sometimes I go to make a Facebook status and I stop myself and come to tumblr or make a note on my phone that will never see the light of day. I say this at the start of almost everything but holy cow it’s been a hard couple of years. I’m so ready to be over this hump. SO READY. But also, so unbelievably overwhelmed.

I’m not sure how I forget that this house is no longer the quiet peaceful house I used to come home to a handful of years ago. My bedroom shares a wall with my 15 year old nephew and another with my almost 90 year old grandpa. I take after my parents in most things, especially when it comes to noise. I am a pretty quiet person to live with. I don’t talk very much, there isn’t a television in my room, and if I listen to music it’s usually in my car. I’m so used to this house being this quiet place where my parents would rather read than watch tv, where everyone kind of does their own thing and comes together for meals. While most of that is still true, everyone still kind of does there own thing, my room is in the middle of the most noise this house has probably ever witnessed.

My grandpa watches the news VERY loudly. And I mean, it’s his right, he’s an old man. He also goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night and doesn’t take the time to slowly shut a door so door slams are another thing. I do enjoy the sound of his shuffling feet on the carpet. I love how he’s always humming a song. So, the good outweighs the bad.

My nephew. Basically, my nephew is the little brother I never had. I’m the youngest. It’s very, very hard, for me to see my parents baby a teenager because they didn’t baby me or my brother to the extent that they’re babying now. Do I get it? Of course I do. He’s had a hard hand dealt to him. I love him. I would take a bullet for him, without hesitation. With that said, I do not understand teenage boys. It is a different world we are living in now compared to the world I lived in when I interacted with teenage boys daily. I also only saw them in social environments. My brother is so much older than me that my memory of living with a teenage boy is limited.

My nephew lives in his bedroom. Most of the time he eats in his bedroom, something that was very very rare for me growing up. He plays video games like 20 hours out of 24 hours in a day. He talks to the people he’s playing those games with while he’s playing them, I don’t get it. Last night he was talking to a girl on SPEAKER while he played a game, while talking to the people playing the game. I know I should find this to be the same as me sitting on a bedroom floor watching a boy play video games, but I can’t wrap my head around it.

The language I hear from my bedroom, the conversations I’m NOT trying to hear every word of, they are shocking to me. I have to constantly remind myself that while I want to think that his upbringing is similar to mine, it hasn’t always. My parents don’t say the f word ever, but my brother says it all the time. I’m sure feeling cool as a teenager saying words that you’re not supposed to say on top of hearing your dad say them most of your life, I get it, that must be hard to break out of.

Being around a teenager, for basically the first time in my life when I’m not a teenager too, is eye-opening. As a teenager I felt a lot of shame, and personal responsibility. I felt insecure, lonely, accountable for my actions. I felt afraid of getting into trouble. I felt like I didn’t belong, a lot. But at the end of the day I also had a house down the street where one of my best friends lived. I didn’t mind watching A Wedding Story with my mom after school and taking a nap before killing myself with the hours of homework I had each day. I didn’t feel a need to pick up a sport, club, or hobby, until it was necessary for me to have something on my transcripts to get into college. I felt rejected a lot because I never was a true part of any friend group I hung out with. But even if I felt like a loner and a lot of things could be defined as me being a loner, I wasn’t one. I didn’t have plans every weekend, but I did have plans often. People remember me from high school even when I don’t remember them. I kissed boys. I had a boyfriend for a week or two here and there. I was secretive with my parents because their rules seemed a lot more strict than I thought I deserved them to be. That sounds really manipulative, but it is true. My parents worried so much that I would get caught up in the wrong crowd or have some sort of bad reputation, but I never really had that in me. I think a lot of being a teenager is just giving into your own personality. It’s never been “me” to take risks. So I went on dates and told my parents I was going with a group. So I went to a late movie when I spent the night at a friend’s house. I did the most minimal risk taking secretive behavior. My brother, on the other hand, was always a risk taker. He always wanted to challenge authority and rules. And while I know that my nephew is not my brother, I cannot help but see some similarities in their personalities.

There’s something so blatantly disrespectful to me about saying words you know you’re not allowed to say out loud loudly. Nothing whispered, nothing even a little bit hidden, just OUT THERE. It’s hard for me. It’s hard for me to not step in and say, listen, you think you sound like an adult and I understand that. I’ve worked in places where people talk JUST like that. Adults saying the f word almost every other word JUST like that. But you know what that says to me? It says that they don’t know how to talk. It says that they’re so unsure about how to sound smart that they’ve resorted to sounding like a teenager’s perspective of what an adult sounds like. I’m not saying DON’T ever say the f word. But let some words MEAN something. Don’t let words that pack a punch be filler words. There are SO MANY words! Find better ones that better suit what you’re wanting to say.

The house wakes up at 5am every weekday. So at 5am, I hear some of the worst music I’ve ever heard for about an hour. I remember the selfishness of being a teenager and I’m not going to tell the boy he can’t get ready listening to his music, but my god I miss silence.

While everyone was at church today, I cleaned the kitchen, I took a shower, and then I sat on my bed in silence, just to soak it in before they returned. Weekdays are better, obviously. I have the entire morning of stillness and quiet. It’s only been a week since I’ve been back, and now I know what I’m dealing with. I know when I should post up downstairs and enjoy the quiet there. I know I can disguise needing quiet with saying I want to watch a show downstairs. I know I can sit in the room no one uses and no one will bother me. I’m getting the hang of being in this house. I am. I know once I have a job it will all be easier. A routine will make everything so much nicer.

As much as I want to keep this feeling very temporary, I do need to be realistic with this situation and with myself. If unpacking everything will make me feel like this is it for now, then I need to do that. Because this isn’t the time for me to sit on my bed and watch Netflix and scroll through instagram. I did that enough in 2017 to last me a lifetime. I am overwhelmed. I did need a second to breathe and decompress. I might need a day or two more. I do need to be patient with myself. But there are things I need money for. Things I need to save for. I need to save to get that silence back. To be with my boyfriend in our own place again. To have that silence while I wake up in the morning. To have that silence after a long day. There are things I am working towards, and so what if those things are on a more personal level than a professional one? I just need A job. I don’t need THE job. I need to be ok. I need to actually take care of myself and that mean more than binging a show and taking a bath. I need to tackle my credit card bill.

I do feel so lucky to be here. I feel lucky to have this time with my family, and a couple of my closest and oldest friends. This time may seem like a bump right now, but in the future when I look back I’m going to be so happy that I was able to see my parents so much. That two of the babies I know get to know who I am. It does feel good to be here for a number of reasons, and I have to be better at reminding myself of them.

In this weird and not so great time in my life I’ve depended on little things to get me through. I read a self help type book. I found myself vomiting words to just about anyone who would listen, just needing to be told everything was going to be ok. For the most part, everyone gave me that reassurance and validation. For the most part, everyone accepted the venting and answered it with compassion and love.

The self help book I read was helpful. It was positive and light hearted. I don’t really read much self help. I like psychology based books. I like real life stories that tie into learning something about myself and others. I like Malcolm Gladwell, basically. But in this time I’ve added about 20 books to my amazon list, some memoirs, some self help, some brain stuff. Anytime books would come up in conversation I kept hearing about the same one over and over. The untethered soul. I’m sure you’ve heard of it too because it is everywhere. Recently a friend was telling me about a book and although the title never came up in our conversation, I’m afraid it’s the one everyone is talking about.

I’m all for letting things go. I’m all for putting things into perspective and trying to be zen. I get that I have a roof over my head and food in my stomach and I am perfectly ok. I also understand that I am an emotional person. Not a hysterical person. An emotional one. I have feelings and I need to talk about them. If you hurt me I will tell you that you did. I will tell you exactly what hurt me. I will have a conversation and I will wait for an apology. Not a I’m sorry you feel that way or I didn’t mean to hurt you, but a true apology. At the end of the day, unless you are a psychopath, you didn’t mean to hurt me, but that part of it doesn’t actually matter. You acknowledge that you did something that hurt someone else and you apologize. You learn from the experience and you do your best to not do it again. This book, it’s too much. I’ve only read some quotes. But it’s problematic. From what my friend said and from what I’ve read, you can only control you and your feelings. You cannot control what someone does. You project reality into things. God even trying to think of how to word what it says is frustrating to me. I understand letting small things go. If a coworker says something that hurt your feelings maybe just letting it go can work and be fine. If someone cuts you off in traffic, let it go. If some homeless person on the street insults you, let it go. I get that aspect. There’s so much we can’t control. There’s so much that’s not worth getting upset about. But you can’t apply that to everything. If your significant other works too much and doesn’t spend enough quality time with you, you’re allowed to have a conversation about that. You’re allowed to feel unloved over it. I don’t believe that we can control every feeling. I don’t believe that it’s that black or white. I think this book teaches you that if someone has an issue with you or says you hurt them, that’s something they’re projecting from something inside of them and it has nothing to do with you. The book basically tells you to be selfish and only worry about your own happiness in the moment. So nothing really matters and you should let everything go. That kind of thing sounds a lot like Scientology to me. It’s not possible for us to clear our minds completely. It’s just not. It hurts my soul that so many people are reading something that basically tells them that you choose to be hurt. I understand the logic to a degree, but not to be a law for every situation.

What is the point of anything if your relationships with others isn’t a priority? What happens to compassion and love and friendship if you are only worried about yourself? All of us aren’t just projecting stories onto other people and the world. All of us are living in actual reality, not one we’ve made up. It seems pretty insane to me that this book makes it seem totally fine to close yourself off.

I’ve kind of given up on making friends.

I’m almost done with reconnecting with old ones too.

There’s only so much ‘feel like a failure’ a person can feel at a time. Right now, not having a job is the bulk of that feeling. And then there are the conversations I start, over and over, the I’d love to see you! that’s met with no response, or even better, the SO busy response. It happens everywhere, to everyone, at every age. I got used to the disappointment in high school. I got used to getting home from school on Fridays and showering and getting ready only to find that no one wanted to hang out with me after all. I never really talked about it because I understood it. I was always going to be a bit of an outsider because my parents weren’t friends with theirs or I wasn’t involved in sports or band or whatever thing they were involved in. I also understood one of the most basic reasons that my mom told me once: not everyone is going to like you. It was some of the best advice she ever gave me. Advice I chose to ignore a lot. It is simple though, really. The bottom line of it all. If someone wants to spend time with you, they will. If someone wants to talk to you, they will. I know that there has to be effort on both sides. I know that there has to be empathy for people and their situations, but that empathy can only be there if there’s enough communication to allow it in the first place.

I went to dinner recently with an old boss and an old coworker, and as I was sitting there spilling my guts, I realized that they were not doing the same. I was met with a lot of surface we just met type of conversation. It made me feel stupid and sad. I worked closely with these two people for months. We came in early, we worked late, we laughed, we cried, we almost quit -ok just me, I almost quit. But it was an intense environment. We were close. We haven’t seen each other in a while, but I don’t see MOST people I’m friends with that often. I don’t think anything of picking up where we left off because I do that with all of my friends. That sheds light on the issue right there. We aren’t friends. We were coworkers. When they showed up at our going away drinks before we moved, they came as friends, but now, almost two years later, that connection wasn’t a permanent one.

Then there are the more recent connections, and the texting to schedule something, and nothing getting scheduled, and then waiting a week or two and texting again. It’s this weird dance where you’re actually standing in one place the entire time. And to them, it might not be a big deal at all, it might be totally normal. But to me, it’s me trying and getting shut down time and time again. You see, I don’t mind driving across town to meet up near your place so you don’t have to drive far. I don’t mind getting together last minute. I don’t mind any of that because I assume that people will do the same with me. But I’m constantly disappointed by thinking that way. Even some of the people I love the most I find won’t do the same for me. So it isn’t surprising, I guess. Maybe in some way I set myself up for that. I’m still waiting for more people to surprise me though.

I was trying really hard to hold it all together but tonight I broke down. I've had a hard time lately. It would make sense to call it depression? But I'm not entirely sure. I've never really felt it before. Not having a job and looking for one without even having anything in mind. Turning 29 and not being as stable as I guess I thought I would be by now. The trip to Barcelona. Trying to connect with people to form actual friendships and feeling let down. Feeling left out. Not feeling like myself. Not wanting to do anything, literally. Tricking myself into thinking I'm fine and I just don't feel like finding a job when the reality is feeling so overwhelmed that I felt paralyzed by the idea of failing before even trying. I don't know. So many things. I didn't call my parents for weeks because I knew I would cry. And then recently I started feeling better and then ok. And so using some miles to come here and breathe seemed like a good idea. It was a good idea. It is a good thing. But it's hard. I want to get my shit together. I know I haven't been trying as hard as I should have been but I'm changing that now. I'm reading. I'm writing. I'm looking for a job. But I'm still disappointed in myself for being in this place at this point in my life. I'm a burden to so many people. I rely on my parents and my boyfriend more than I want to. I want to change and I want to help myself. I don't want to let myself feel stuck or like I can't try something and fail. I just need to do something, try something, take whatever job. Apply to everything instead of nothing. It's hard to be so frustrated and to feel like I should've done things I didn't. And I know all the pep talks and the logic but it doesn't mean that my brain CAN'T go there. It does anyway. I know I know pen to paper it'll help. I'll try.

It's important to note I've been singing Dashboard Confessional to myself in my kitchen for about an hour. Earbuds in. Some harmony is involved.

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