Tuesday, May 1, 2007

today's fears, tomorrow's repercussions

A new day dawns, with an old heartache. A new month begins, with the same distance that engulfed me the month before. A distance, not measurable my centimeters, inches, feet, or even miles. This distance I speak of is metaphorical, psychological, in all accounts, not distance, just merely difference. This is a distance from me, from who I really am, and who I’ve become as each monotonous day has dulled me. Who am I, if I am not who I thought myself to be before? And when exactly is before? Before what? I can’t remember a day that marked this change, I can’t pinpoint a minute, or even a second in time where I lost myself. It happened suddenly, and yet so slowly. I am not who I always was, nor am I the person I am meant to be. I’m stuck in the in-between. I’m striving to be this person, this professional, this adult. I’m being forced by society to fulfill this role, that I’m still not sure I believe in. I find so many cracks in the ideas that I’m supposed to fulfill that I’m not sure that I want to be that person anymore. Go to high school, graduate, go to college, and start over. Why? Take the same classes every other psych major takes, and become a brilliant psychologist. A brilliantly normal, and by all accounts identical psychologist. We’re sheep fulfilling the criteria of the professional. I don’t want to be a fucking sheep. I have my own ideas about people. We don’t all fit into this criteria we’re forced to judge sanity by. If I were to measure myself on the scale of mental illness, I doubt they’d allow me to pass my judgment on to others. A self-diagnosis I’ve revamped day by day as my symptoms worsen to the point of breaking. Dependent, fearful of rejection, introverted, highly distractible, unable to develop concrete goals…. In all reality, a completely normal, yet uniquely complicated college student still getting a handle on the world that is changing more and more everyday. I learn what I have to, I do what I’m told, and I turn around and the world is different. I went to grade school learning Pluto was a planet for Christ’s sakes, my child years from now will look at me like some moron when I tell them that. “Pluto isn’t a planet, mom, don’t be a dummy.” I can just hear it now. Professor’s spew data like it’s scientific proof of the world, but it’s not. Today’s facts, are tomorrow’s faux-pas moments. We have no idea what tomorrow holds, we can barely uncover the truths of today, or even a thousand years past. Dinosaurs were rendered extinct millions of years ago, and we have yet to uncover a single clue. People die of unknown causes every few minutes, and we don’t even bat an eyelash. The future will slap us in the face one of these days, and all we’ll be able to say is that the red mark that ensued resembled very closely a human hand of today. So where does this leave me? In between. All I have yet to figure is in between what? Will I be the perfect psychologist my degree is molding me into? Will I continue down this path, the path a thousand others have taken, and are taking with me? Or will I stray? Will I find who I really am? Some days I wonder if I even want to know who I am, who I was, or who I’m supposed to be. Life confuses me, death confuses me. Things were so easy in the beginning. Friends were plentiful, family was tight, life was sunny. Twenty years later I look back and wonder how to survive without all that. Without a father, or a best friend, or a proper family. I wonder if life matters without them. I wonder if anything will ever matter as much as things did back then. Everyday I search for my answer. Everyday I get a little more frustrated about the world, and myself. The lights dim, as day turns to night, and the thoughts intensify. The nights are the hardest.
Tonight is the worst. His arms are not around me, though they will be when my head hits that pillow. He loves me, with everything he is, and I know that. I am absolutely sure of his devotion to be with me for the rest of our lives. I tell him I wouldn’t but if he asked me this second to marry him, I wouldn’t hesitate. He would never leave me. And yet, I hear myself each time he tries to leave. I hear the crack in my voice as I choke back the tears, and I wonder what the hell is wrong with me. I try to quiet my fears, that he’s not going where he tells me he is, even though I have no doubt in my mind that that is exactly where he is. I’m just afraid, terrified by all accounts that I’m not enough. I never was enough. Everyone leaves, everyone made excuses, and everyone always told me they loved me. So how do I stop this? How do I believe that he’s not going to end up like all the rest of them? I bore them. I don’t do anything spectacular. I can do math at an unrealistically fast speed in my head, but there are geniuses that can do it better. I can write a well-developed paper for class in about an hour and get an A. I can study for 10 minutes and pass my final exam like I will tomorrow morning. I can read disgustingly fast, which allows me to always, always finish first, but only turn my paper in second, because I’m a little unsure of myself. I’m not special. I’m not different. I’m not who he thinks I am. That’s what scares me the most on these nights, that he’s finally realized I’m not that girl he has in his head anymore. I’m not that writer anymore, or that genius, or that fantastic cook. I burn toast, I can’t flip pancakes, I can’t form a coherent sentence half the time I try to write anymore. I’ve spelled 7 words wrong in the last 2 sentences I’ve tried to write. I’m falling apart. I’m disintegrating at a rate so fast that I might lose myself before I can tell him any of this. I’m just so fucking lost. I need my best friend, both of them. No matter how broken he is, or how busy and still somehow disappointed in me she is. I need them. I need a glimpse of what was in order to keep going towards what will be. I’m broken, and bleeding, and no one’s holding the wound anymore. No one is dealing with me anymore. No one cares. And it hurts more that I ever thought it would. Numbness is appealing in situations like today.
I hope that one day I can get over these ridiculous fears. That one day, or year, or month from now I can be okay. I hope it happens gradually, and shows up all of a sudden, just like how I got here. I hope this in between will disappear exactly as it came, without recognition. I do not want to remember these days. They are monotonous, tear filled, and hard to swallow. The one sadness that only strengthens when you try to drink it away. It tries to choke you, and drown you in everything you can’t be. This world is fucked up like that, it tries to kill you in the most ridiculous fashions. It tries to kill you on the inside, so the person on the outside dies as well. I won’t let that happen. I used to love who I was, what I stood for. I don’t stand for anything right now, I can barely stand on my own to be honest. I’m tired of it. I’m scared of it, and it’s going to change as soon as I can find a breath of reason.
So fuck the world’s ideas of what I should be, because tomorrow, they’ll only want me to be something different anyway

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