Word Vomit

Andrea. 28. Still finding myself...

[valeria-50-deactivated20260310]

me & you someday🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷

[sincerely-smeagol]

Sometimes I miss the chase. Sometimes I miss being lusted after. Sometimes I wonder if I wasted my twenties. Maybe I settled down too quickly. Even though I've been with plenty of men, I've been in one relationship after another since I was 16. For 12 years, I've known stability. And I've passed up plenty of potential love stories just like you see in the movies. I just may not have realized how hot and romantic the scenarios were at the time.

I ran across an old post from one of those potential love stories today, and I couldn't help but wonder what if... It was the kind of story that I'd be screaming at myself through the TV for. KISS HIM! OH MY GOSH, ARE YOU AN IDIOT?! GO AFTER HIM!

After knowing me for less than a week, this guy told me he was in love with my personality. He cried after meeting me because he felt such a connection to me. I felt myself cringing a little about the crying part reading it back, but he could just be a very sweet and sensitive man. Still, I tend to err on the side of manly emotionless men. Then I can complain when they won't share their feelings.

I miss the intrigue and the romance. The flirting. The sexual tension. The fantasy. The escape. Ugh.

[sincerely-smeagol]

Anxiety

I guess I've always had it...

But I don't think I really knew what it was until I was an "adult". I say adult lightly because even at 28, I still don't have a clue what I'm doing. Sure, I can vote and drink and I am capable of taking care of myself, but I don't really feel like an adult.

Imposter syndrome is very real. I feel like I'm skating through life sometimes, not really improving, just treading water most of the time.

I first started saying I had anxiety in college. Social anxiety. Being around other people made me tired sometimes even though I was one of the most outgoing people I knew and always had been. I had my fingers in a lot of pies. I was in a sorority, I was director of marketing for our college radio station, I had three jobs...I was very social. But all that took a toll on my energy levels, and I started to realize I like smoking pot and staying in with my dog a lot more than I liked people most of the time. At that point, my social anxiety was often the crutch I leaned on when I just didn't want to see someone. We would have plans to hang out, and I would back out at the last possible second because it was just easier to be alone. Well, I'm married now, and I'm still that way. I'm 28 years old and my husband is my only consistent friend. How sad is that? I don't know, maybe it's not that bad. I love my husband, and he's a great friend. My best friend. I've tried off and on to make new friends as an adult, but it takes so much energy to get to know people organically and to continue to make plans regularly. Everyone has lives and schedules and honestly I'm exhausted most of the time anyway.

This is not what I planned to write about. I feel like I got off into the weeds, but I guess the point was just to write it. My brain was spinning with anxious thoughts and I couldn't fall asleep, so I figured it would be best to just get it out.

The thing that was bothering me is I don't really know when my anxiety started or why...

Today, my anxiety looks a lot like stressing out over being a perfectionist and wondering how the hell I'm going to make a case to my boss that I deserve to be promoted if I keep making stupid mistakes because I'm overwhelmed, and my overwhelm is caused by my anxiety which causes more anxiety. Which further fuels the imposter syndrome and makes me feel like a piece of shit. It's like if I am not constantly receiving positive feedback, I fill that void with every negative feeling I've ever felt about myself and that becomes what everyone else must think of me.

I'm constantly spiraling out about what other people think about me, analyzing their facial expressions and the tone they used when they said something to me. I read between the lines that they must hate me. Why am I like this? I know I've been burned in the past by people and that has made me a little cynical, but is that really the root?

I want to be my authentic self and some people say they love how I'm just my weird self all the time, but I feel like I'm constantly censoring myself, tempering my weird and awkward so they'll like me, afraid I might be too much all at once or I might say or do something embarrassing.

I'm constantly comparing myself to other people. Why can't I be more like them? More chill. More cool. More unafraid.

I don't know how I got this way. I always embraced my quirkiness in school, even when people made fun of me for it. I always just let it roll off my back and did my own thing anyway. And to a point, I still do. But I think their weird looks and whispers seep in deeper and faster these days.

I want to let go and just be me. I want to be truly free from my anxious thoughts and preoccupation with how other people perceive me.

[sincerely-smeagol]

“You’ve become so damaged that when someone tries to give you what you deserve, you have no fucking idea how to respond.”

— (via fuckinq)

[kushandwizdom]

[sincerely-smeagol]

“It is an interesting law of romance that a truly strong woman will choose a strong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. Strength demands intelligence, intelligence demands stimulation, and weakness is boring. It is better to find a partner you can contend with for a lifetime than one who accommodates you because he doesn’t really care.”

— Roger Ebert (via observando)

[sincerely-smeagol]

“It’s not unusual to want to be with someone who you’re sure doesn’t want to be with you, and to keep wanting them anyway. It’s not unusual to fall in love with all the wrong things and all the wrong people. It’s not unusual to feel like you deserve more or different or better. It’s not unusual to wonder if anyone can ever really love you, the real you; all of the real you. It’s not unusual to wonder who the real you is.”

— Things That are Not Unusual (Kovie Biakolo)

[whenincambridge]

when someone asks what its like to be young these days

[sincerely-smeagol]

“Who hurt you so much that you started to hate yourself?”

— Midnight thoughts (what made you so sad)

[tattoosga]

tattoos -

[chapstick-dyke-deactivated20161]

[im-not-the-same-person-i-was]

Oh God, this is not the life I want. My roses are wilted. I want them to bloom. The rain is pouring. I want the sun. The windows are closed. I want to feel the wind. I think about dying but I want to fucking live.

This isn’t me. (via im-not-the-same-person-i-was)

[hiddenshores]

All she wanted was to find a place to stretch her bones. A place to lengthen her smiles and spread her hair a place where her legs could walk without cutting and bruising a place unchained. She was born out of ocean breath. I reminded her; ‘Stop pouring so much of yourself into hearts that have no room for themselves do not thin yourself, be vast. You do not bring the ocean to a river.’

Tapiwa Mugabe, “You Are Oceanic”, in ‘Zimbabwe’ (via hiddenshores)

[wordswritteninsilence]

I don’t know how to end toxic relationships, or poems that bleed. At day’s end, they both break me.

Navin E. (On endings)

[watchoutforintellect]

And we both wrote poems we couldn’t write and cried together the whole long night and fell in love with a delicate breath […]

Anne Sexton - From Eighteen Days Without You (via watchoutforintellect)

[wnq-writers]

I think back to younger days when I couldn’t articulate my feelings; I am forever thankful for the years of solitude that allowed me to learn the language of my own heart.

rustysharkteeth (via wnq-writers)

[misswallflower]

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

Anna Akhmatova (via misswallflower)