Detox your life

I and food, that is not a match made in heaven. There are days that I love it and days that I hate it, I use it to control my body and sometimes I refuse to eat, to punish myself. So for the longest time, fasting was not an option for me at all. It still is, when we speak of food fasting. I know deep in my heart, that it is not the right time to do it that way, and I have peace at that thought because let me tell you, food is not the only thing a person can cut short in order to clean out ones life.

I mentioned in two recent posts that I have been doing some sort of project that had me evaluate some things and also made me think a lot. So here is what happened about a month ago:

I was chatting on Whatsapp with a guy friend of mine, when all of a sudden he started telling me about how his friend had convinced him to abstain from any sort of media for the next three weeks. We are currently speaking of two guys who really really like their computers, especially video games. So I was more than ready to laugh at them and I was pretty sure they were going to go insane within days. Of course I was also rather intriueged about their reason, so I asked my questions. The answer was not as funny as I'd hoped for, as they wanted to do it to get rid of those distractions that kept them from getting closer to God. I then proceeded to word out how impressed I was, only to be followed by an explanation why I could never do it.

I think my words were "one day I want to do this too, but not yet", to which I got following answer "every day, is not yet day". I'm conviced my friend didn't plan it, but that hit a note with me. He was right. I knew they wanted to start at midnight, so I lay in my bed, scrolling through facebook at quarter to twelve and I did it so delibaretely I kind of knew something was up. Though I still refused, making bad excuses and being convinced that I was simply not capable of doing it. My friend then went to sleep, as wanted I, but I couldn't. I felt the tug on my heart and I already knew what I was supposed to do, even though I did not want to at all. I took out my diary and made a really short pro and contra list just to buy myself some more time. In the end I made my desicion.

I told myself for the first few days, I would not tell anyone (except from one whatsapp group). Then I set myself rules, for example that books were banned, except christian books and the bible. Then whatsapp was ok, but every social media was banned too. In order to shorten it, I just called it media ban. The last thing I did before really trying to fall asleep was, I prayed to God.

I said something alon the lines of: I'm going out of a limb now. I feel like I will go cray in three weeks with no media, so all I can do is ask for you to do something with it. I have heard stories of how much you can do in times like that, so if I'm honest, I expect magical moments. I'm making a fool out of myself, but all I want is that it is some sort of worth it. Be present in that time. Thank you.

And thus a magical journey started. From day one on I had a good feeling (I had a test on day two, and I was so borred that I studied the whole day and aced the test). Yes I cheated a little, but I never did it out of need, but always out of curiosity. One day I complained to the guy I mentioned first, that I was so borred and that God wasn't talking (that was a lie, I just did not listen well enough), so the day after God did not shut up until 4 am. Humorous that guy, really.

When it all came to an end I was discussing the results with my friend, without really saying what happened in detail, just general things and I felt like thanking him for telling me. "Even though you never meant for me to join you two, I am more than happy thad I did". His reply, once more, was on point. "Just because I didn't mean to, doesn't mean someone else didn't". Yes, indeed, God wanted me to take time off and listen to him. I obliged to what he said and yes, it was a rollercoaster of emotions. There were moments I could not help but smile, also nights when all I did was crying my eyes out, feeling like it would never stop.

There are more stories and blog post ideas that I took from there, but I don't want spoil it all.  Let me just say, the next fasting is upon me, starting from wednesday till easter I will cut the social medias again, plus no alcohol (except my birthday and the day I celebrate my birthday, which are two dates already set). Just one tip to give anybody trying to do any kind of fasting: Set yourself rules, and stick to them. If you know that there will be days that you want to cheat, not spontaniously but because life around you goes on, then decided those exceptions before. Once the fasting starts, try to stick to the plan as good as possibly. It really is a good thing to try out, and possibly repeat once in a while too, as once you've developed a liking to such a challenge, the next one is probably just waiting around the corner.

Cheerio.

A working human being

For a very long time I have been obsessed with his idea that I would only find purpose in my own life as long as I was seen as useful by society. That's part of the reason why I felt so bad during my gap year, sitting home alone wasn't giving me that feeling of satisfaction I was looking for. On the other hand I'm not that typical hard working person. I know enough people who invest their everything in one or more parts of their life up to the point that I sincerely have to worry about them and stuff like their sleeping schedules. I've always been a bit on the lazy things when it comes to getting things done and I'm rocking whatever task, as long as I do it last minute.

I'm a responsible human and sometimes when things do not work out as planned I take the blame even though I shouldn't. When I'm upset over something I'll consider what the other people involved feel and I force myself not to be upset because on some level I can always relate to their pain. I simply force myself to be understanding, loving and caring, to a point where I can't handle it anymore, because I forget the most important person in my life, the one I’m supposed to look after the most.

I forget that most of my emotions are real, valuable, and that pain demands to be felt. I tend to oversee the fact that I value other people’s feelings, so why not mine? There is no need for getting past a problem before it is fully solved. Why fight the symptoms when I'm supposed to get to the cause first, to prevent further problems to arise. I hardly ever take medication, and it's even rarer that I take a tablet just because I'm having some sort of pain. I either now the source of it or I'll suffer through it without chemical help. 

There is this quote that I have told myself over and over again which says life is not about existing, or functioning, but about living. So just to be a working human being, a useful part of society isn't what my life should be about, still I always find myself forgetting that in moments of leisure and I decide to call myself lazy instead of taking that time off for myself. We are not robots, nor puppets, programmed to act a certain way, each individual is unique and reacts different.

I'm a full bag of emotions and when I decided to ignore that several years back, because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, they found a way to make me aware of it in new ways. All of a sudden, no previous warnings, I would get those awful waves of dizziness and terrible nauseas. I would not even comprehend the situation, why exactly, but after a while it was gone again. It took several month of this before it turned worse and I threw up on a regular basis, which caused me to eat less because I couldn't keep it down anymore, which caused more nausea as my body was aching for food that I wasn't able to eat due to raging nausea. Beautiful vicious circle. That started four years ago and it took me two years to get past it.

It's actually quite horrifying to have a body that feels like it can just stop working on you at any given time. I used to hate myself for what I looked like, then I worked on that because when you are as easily attacked as I am you don't need yourself pushing you down all the time. I even found a strange kind of optimism again that I was capable of fighting through it, which is probably gone by now, starved to death.

Now it's back since three months and I absolutely cannot fathom going through this once more, especially if I see how long it took me to get better. The worst part is I can't do anything anymore, at least that's how I feel. Last time I took some month off where I would still go to school, but apart from that I was merely looking for inner peace. Due to that I didn't go to a camp and I missed out on other fun activities out of sheer fear to be stressed out. Missing things you would’ve actually very much liked to do with people you very much love to spend time with is absolutely stupid. I felt so bad after such a day of being in, missing potentially making some beautiful memories with my friends, that it just added to my misery.

Today we have such a crap day once more. The guys from my youth group are organizing a LAN party (Pc-gaming) and I have literally been looking forward to it for weeks, if not months. I have practiced playing one of the games but this week my body decided to put me at my lowest again. It's currently almost 8:00 am; I've been awake since 5:30 with the highest possible amount of having slept two hours, probably less. My stomach is killing me so much that I can't imagine eating a lot today, which won't help myself tomorrow either. I wouldn't come far if I left the house and honestly, I feel too gross and low to be with them. I'm so frustrated and disappointed in myself that at six in the morning I started sending out prayer requests to some of my closest friends. Of course it's not about the party alone, it's about how I hate living my life so low profile that I don't get worked up, that's not a life worth living for. Besides, being excited for something causes a certain amount of stress and oh well, I don't like the idea of not looking forward to things anymore just so that I don't have to worry to be able to attend, that's stupid.

What am I supposed to do? Quit my responsibilities at youth group, stop working at the library, stay away from church, or quit university? (Jup more than half of my life is church, ok?) I don't have many things that I can cut down with and I don't consider doing it anyway, I refuse to give in. The pain of missing out would be worse than that.

On the other hand I need to get myself together once more. In a week's time I'll be in Mallorca again, and I assume that it will be exciting and exhausting, just like last year. With only a quarter of my energy level there is a high chance of me not being able to enjoy anything, and that sucks so bad I could cry. I feel like I'm in this hole in the ground and there is no other way out so I have to jump up to get to its edges and then use my strength to pull myself out. That sounds impossible to me. I have to think about that first, contemplating whether or not I'm able to face my demons once again and fight through. In the end I won't have any other possibilities, as just dropping dead doesn't seem to be an option. Besides, the first thing I'm doing now is trying to feel happy, because a good attitude fights those demons off like nothing else. Optimism, come back to me, I need you!

Yes I'm rambling, about a teeny tiny thing in comparison to other things happening in the world right now. Complaining is good though, it frees the spirit. I needed to be an egoist today and I might need to keep that up for a little longer, because I'm so bad at suffering in silence. Now at almost 10:00 I feel already a little better. I’ve talked with my brother about coping strategies because we suffer from the same problem occasionally, and as I decided against heading in to work today because it would've made everything worse, I might be able to change this day from horrible to ok, which would be amazing.

Thanks for reading through this if you did. I can hate on female stereotypes as much as I want, nothing helps myself like letting my worries out!

Hope you have a lovely day

Cheerio.

Redefine yourself

I know I know, I constantly write about growing and getting better and becoming more than I am now. I write these posts because that topic will never grow old. It's important to never stop, to stay in motion your whole life. What that means concretely? I have no clue. I mean I don't even know about the person I'll be in a year’s time, how am I supposed to define personal change? That's not possible; all I can write about is hypothesis of possibility.

A lot of people see the New Year as a new beginning; they make goals and imagine what could happen in the next 365 days of this year. I kind of dislike this habit due to various reasons, one standing out especially. I think what you imagine your year to be in the first place will most of the time not correspondent with what has been going on the whole year round and that's just fine. How boring would life be if you could see the future? On the other hand marking where you are in the beginning of January and then looking at what you became by December seems useful in order to keep track of your changing self. Settling affairs in your mind and then getting them done feels quite brilliant.

 Anyways, here comes the reason why I'm not very fond of New Year’s resolutions. I remember back when I was about 14 years old we were told to write down some goals and put the result in an envelope. We were supposed to get them back by the end of the year, but surprisingly (*cough* Ilovemyunorganizedchurch *cough*) we only received them again a year and something late. So as a then sixteen year old I looked at my resolution and allowed myself a little laugh. If I had followed them I would've dropped out of high school as one of them was to choose math as a main subject. I mean I've got some talents, but maths definitely isn't one of them.

Ever since I banned myself from making yearly goals, because my imagination isn't capable to understand  what is possible in a year. This year however I was once again told to draft some possible outcomes and to be honest I'm not the person to leave a blank. On the other hand I know that writing down very specific thoughts would not help me in any way. So here it is, my resolution for 2014 is: to be like the lion from "the wizard of Oz".

That sounds like a perfect plan. I mean I'm not even that much familiar with this story, I know most of what I do from watching a certain episode of "Futurama" and reading the Wikipedia article. You see I’m very well educated by TV and internet. What I know is that the lion didn't have any courage and that he developed throughout the story. I like it because it's a literature based goal, also it's not very specific. At least it tackles one of my biggest fears, being afraid itself. In case you wonder, yes I'm so deep and philosophical that I'm scared of being scared. Oh the irony. 

There are an awful lot of scary and most of all challenging thing that might cross my path this year but I'll throw myself into the battle once more, trying to have some actual character growth, just like the lion does, so maybe in the end I might have more of a lioness than of the gazelle I resemble right now. I think that's a good goal for everybody.

Also what I'd like to emphasize is the importance of being persistent. I'm working on myself and that takes time, so to continue writing about it shows that I keep it in mind constantly. It actually probably never gets old, every once in a while I will tell myself to talk about it over and over again. The process never stops.

And before I forget, I'm also trying to get back into some sort of schedule. In my head there are so many good ideas, but such a lack of words. Not a very good thing for a blogger, yet something I can overcome. So see you soon, promise!

Cheerio.

Hit me baby one more time

I should probably just stop making titles out of pop songs I don't even like, but the other option I had was "from Saul to Paul" which from the perspective of a non-church person sounds either bad or like absolutely nothing. Anyway, here is the thing.

There is this topic that has haunted me for a long time now and whenever it reappears in my head I struggle with it all over. If you dislike everything biblically touched then feel free to skip this paragraph from here on. Otherwise just continue it is actually something more or less relatable. I'm not sure if you are familiar with the biblical story, but there was this bad guy called Saul who wanted to haunt down all the Christians only some years after Jesus had died. He was very successful doing it until one day all of a sudden he had an encounter with Jesus himself and that changed his life forever. Usually this little story and his life are used as a metaphor to cheer up those who consider them self too flawed as that they could ever be used by God.

As a person who lived on this planet for nearly twenty years let me tell you two things. Firstly we are all flawed and broken human beings. We all have scars somewhere, visible or not. Secondly, still some people have it worse than others and I just know where my place is in that scale.

I am a lucky girl. Don't get me wrong, I remember this time a year ago I spent most of my nights crying myself to sleep. You can now either think I'm weak or you understand that the breaking point of everyone is different. As you can see it took me less than a year from the ground up again. My life consists of valleys and peaks and I make sure to enjoy the view from a viewpoint as long as I'm up there. The next little down is probably just around the corner, its shadows reaching for me. I should just be grateful for all the sun that I got during my life, but it's a source of fear instead.


There's this saying "God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers". I mean if you are going through a hard time that sounds perfect, but when you know yourself that you handle things moderately then it's not as pleasant. This saying basically makes me the weakest soldier to ever join the forces. I honestly fear that I will not be taken seriously ever if my life resolves like this. Don't we all look up to those incredibly strong people who have not been taken down by anything?

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for actual bad things to hit me, that'd just be plain stupid, no thanks. I also know what some people around me went through and I am very thankful that I didn't have to deal with it. Sometimes I just fear that due to me being what I call lucky, I do not understand how hard it actually is. Pain forms you, no one can tell me it doesn't. Imagine this piece of clay. It doesn't become a beautiful vase without some serious kneading, right? Humans are the same I think.

The fears get even worse when I think of what I want to do in the future. I might see some pretty terrible things later and I'm not absolutely positive that I can handle them. I've known that for a long time now and I still worry that that's the main reason why I'm not supposed to ever work in the field I plan to. What if I just fail due to my own weakness or because I simply won't be taken serious.

I'm a white girl, coming out of a family whit not too many issues. What do I know about the real world, about things like depression, violence, poverty, world hunger, drug abuse? Nothing. There are some other things I know though. I know that I'm willingly to learn about them. I want to listen, I want to help. I might not be strong yet, but I'll learn it, step by step, fight by fight. 

Sometimes I also feel like not yet awake. I think that there is more to me that I am now and I want to use my full potential. How do I wake up when I feel like I'm asleep all the time? How do I get past that stand-by mode, how do I awake the Paul that lives inside this lazy little Saul?

I think it's about transformation in general, about growing over you, again and again. You don't need to hit rock bottom, but you need to face fears. Everyone needs to fight their own battles, one demon at a time. If my biggest problem is my own laziness then that doesn't mean it's less of a problem than real life depression. Whatever hurts me is something I as a person cannot tolerate anymore. I might not have heroic stories afterwards, but I'll have personal growth and trust me, nothing is worse than standing still for too long.

Cheerio.

P.s. Sorry I'm lame, NaNoWriMo is eating my soul and my time. Which is a bad excuse but yeah .

How to become a fighter

I've been away for the last ten days and spend an amazing time with great people. I wanted this post to be about my experiences on that trip but instead I've decided to postpone that one for next week. I'll still be touching something that happened while I wasn't at home.

I guess I've mentioned it quite often that I'm not a very dedicated person. I try, and if I don't succeed I just do what I can and then might as well give up. Usually I don't do my very best but just the amount that is necessary to still pass whatever task I'm doing. School is a good example there. When you write your finals you should probably study a lot and set your goals the highest you can. Instead of doing that I wanted to achieve an average level and other than working for school I watched series. My grades in the end were ok, you know, but it could've been better if I just worked harder.

 The thing is, as soon you’re out of it school gets unimportant. Not a lot of people care about the grades you had when you apply to a job, at least not around here. I struggled finding a job so much, not because my grades weren't that good but because I wasn't dedicated enough. I just wrote application after application, but what I should’ve done was phoning companies or apply directly by going there and presenting myself. You have to be though around this world nowadays, open and ambitious. That's exactly my problem.

That's why I'm so proud of this blog. My posts may not be the best ones, but I work rather hard for them, do a lot of thinking before writing and I update it on a regular basis. I could be better, but I know that I still have quite the distance to travel until I reach what I want with this site and with my writing in general so it’s a good field to practise in. 

Obviously I was still not happy with the rest of my situation, so what changed my point of view? Why did I suddenly decide that what I've been doing so far was not good enough? Well first of all I have goals that I want to achieve and all of them are things that are not the easiest for me. I always knew that I would get there eventually, but did not care that much how or more important when. 

The thing is I don't have time anymore to linger around. I see people achieving their goals at a young age and within me there is the urge to get there too. People plan big things and i feel like I do nothing at all which is not very satisfactory. Plus I don't have the energy left to be tossed around by life like a leave in a stormy river. 

My parents have already separated and that one was hard. After a year I felt quite ok with the whole situation, knowing my father wanted to keep the flat so I'd still have a home here in this town. While I was away my mum went to a lawyer because there where financial problems between my parents not yet resolved. They are now getting divorced and my father probably sells our flat. That combined with the fact that the whole Uni thing scares me so much deep down made it obvious that I needed to get stronger.

While I was away I learned a lot about myself and where my life is heading. I know more of what I want with all of my heart. I'll make sure to tell you more about that, but all you need to know for now is that one day I felt all my fears built up into this massive wall. That had already happened before, but this time I was fed up. Not for the first but hopefully for the last time I've decided that it was enough, that the little girl who is afraid of everything needs to grow up. 

Life is not fair. Not to me, not to anyone else. We have to seize the good moments and get through the bad ones. I've decided, and declare it in front of the internet, that from now on I want to be a fighter. If there is a wall ahead of me, I'll just run past it, head first. Anyone trying to stop me from achieving my goals shall be kicked in the butt. I'm putting on my armour, ready to fight. Trust me, I have a whole army behind me, of that I'm sure. 

That is not me resigning from ever moaning again. I'll still be hurt sometimes, still be complaining from time to time. I just refuse to let that stop me from becoming who I want to be. I prefer dying in a battle instead of hiding under my blankets for the rest of my life. I don't want to survive life, I want to live it. You might not see any difference, but I hope I'll feel one deep inside. Let's conquer the world with kind hearts.

Cheerio.