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.

defining your own freedom

 Next week I'm turning twenty years old. For some reason that sounds even scarier than turning eighteen was. I mean of course that's the age when you become an adult, you get to vote, you pay taxes and whatnot but in the end most of us were still very much kids when we got there and it was ok that way. Maybe you were about to graduate high school, you might've made plans to travel a bit, or your job training was about to be completed. Whatever it was, your life still had this unimaginable amount of possibilities open for you.

 There is something about being a teenager that means freedom. Maybe it's the lack of better knowledge or the fact that those hormonal beasts just can't be controlled anyway, but there are many roads open. You're free to choose what you want to study; you can never ever travel as easy as you can do now, the world lies beneath your feet. Yes you can still do lots of things in your twenties, especially when there is no hurry to have kids, but you have to be the right person for it. A traveller is easy going, adventurous. I have heard enough stories of friends who went to Australia during their gap year, whilst I sat on my couch in front of a laptop watching YouTube videos.

 Now I feel like the responsible side of my brain has taken over. I work, I go to Uni, I study, I go to church and youth group. It's somewhat monotone. The problem is I just recently discovered how much I adore not being tied to a normal life, how much I actually crave for freedom and the feeling of no strings attached. I thought that having found my place was what I needed. Having roots is a good thing and essential, but living in a golden cage would be torture to me as I seem to be having a rather free spirit.

 So much has had me thinking recently. Once again I look at my life and even though I'm not doing as poorly as I did a year ago, there is definitely more that I still want to do, so much things left to learn. I have a list of places that I want to see, some are not even that far away, but I just don't take the money and time and to actually move my lazy bum there. I'm also evaluating my own short- and long-term goals. There is a lot of faith in me that there is a plan for my life, maybe not for every little instant but for the bigger things. Am I right now doing whatever I can to get there, to achieve those goals? Am I wasting my time when I'm supposed to be doing something entirely different? It's quite hard to distinguish what I should do when. When is a time for quitting, when to endure? I have not a single clue; all I can is to try to make the best of it.

 So far I have not been such a person who wanted to escape normality by whatever cost it may take, but slowly I begin to realise how much the thought of that monotony appals me. How to evade it whilst still being a working part of society? I'm not one to drop out just like that, nor am I one to be pioneering and to make revolutions. I can't just quit my job because first of all it's a good one and I've had it worse. I kind of don't want to quit youth group because it's something that is dear to me, even when it's not always easy. I can't quit church because it's also a place where I experience some of the freedom I look for, though it's also the place that makes me feel restricted so much. Finally I can't quit Uni because even though for a short time that would make me very happy, it's not a good long-time decision. Maybe someday this stupid piece of paper that is a degree will be of a use. I even considered stopping to write this blog because I have not been happy with my online content recently. What am I even talking about? I just know that there is no quitting here, I just need to keep going. Sometimes feelings are tricky, mine usually leave the consequences to a future self instead of considering them in the first place, so I need to find a way to trick them.

 Yes, I realize where my main troubles lie, but as I said, knowing what to do next in life is quite a challenge. Where do I have to make cuts in order to refind happiness and to feel a little more liberated than I am right now? Is freedom something that is on my agenda right now?

 I don't know, that's just what went round and round in my head the past month. In the end I'm sure of two things: That once I'm at the finish line of my life I will look back and see how everything turned out just right. This means that in this very instant, I’m doing just fine even though I might struggle with it. The other thing is that finding out what that means exactly is the work and the adventure of a lifetime. No one is ever ahead of their life, everybody is in constant evaluation and recreation, you find your very on path and that's what life is about.

Cheerio.