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.

My worst enemy

Growing up some people learn a lesson, namely that children can be cruel. I mean I was not majorly bullied back in school, but that was mostly because I tried to fit in a lot. Still I can remember moments when I was mocked. Especially music camp comes to my mind. Every person who slept with me in a room left for another, I was left alone. The kids locked me in my room with a chair under the door knob. I was called names (ok, I mean they actually called me the chemical name for water, but firstly I didn’t understand that back then and secondly they wanted it to be mean, the intention counts there). What I learned then was that words can hurt, but that I was also not going to take crap from every person who needed an outlet for the negativity in their life.

As a “grown up” there are very little people left who I allow enough power and access to my emotions to actually hurt me. I have trusted people but the scenarios in which they betray me, well they are limited I’d say. Still there is someone left who tears me apart on an almost daily basis. This person is a bully of an indepth knowledge of my every weakness that makes it seemingly impossible to get past it. I’m still finding my way out of this abusive relationship, but it’s a really tough call.

Who I’m talking about you ask? The answer is simply, it’s me. I am my worst enemy. I’m rather easy with forgiving others. My own mistakes? I carry them on my back year after year. One example for this stands out over all of the others though. There was this girl that I used to play sports with. I had nothing against here and I remember days in which we even got along fairly well. On the other hand there was this rather bossy girl (she did look innocent but she was rather manipulative), who had a leading position in our team. Both girls did not get along, why doesn’t matter. The bossy girl then decided to hate on the other, somehow convincing the whole rest of the team to join her, me included. We bullied her. Nowadays I cannot even imagine how I was so blind to do such a thing, but I was easy to be manipulated. Eventually the bullied girl quit. To my own luck the story doesn’t end there as this would be a very big shame.

Two or three years after her leaving, the formerly bullied girl and her family joined our church. I kid you not, when I first saw her again I was in desperate search for the deepest darkest hole to hide in and never get back out. Guilt is a terrible emotion, especially when you know that you’ve earned it. Unlike what I expected her to do, she did not blame me, she wasn’t mean to me or anything. Even better, she forgave me very quickly. I remember her sitting on my lap during Sunday school (we are talking about a person who is not even cuddly!). While it was ok for her, it was not for me. It took me years for what she did in weeks. I even remember one evening more than a year ago. Another friend and I had spontaneously spend the day at hers, playing video games. In the evening during the family dinner suddenly her mother said jokingly: “Who would’ve ever thought back in the day that one day you’d be eating at this very table”. I mean we had all talked about it and shared some laughs about my stupidity, but even back then it still had an edge to me, even though I’m mostly ok with it now.

There is a saying that goes: “If you talked to your friends the way you talk to your body, you’d have no friends left at all.” I probably call myself stupid twice a day, ugly probably once. I don’t trust myself. When I think of my goals, the only thing I see stopping myself from achieving them, is me. It’s like I’m constantly trying to fight my own shadow, and I’m losing. It’s a circle of negativity.

If you know this blog then you might’ve understood that I never end a post on a negative note. So there comes my life lesson. I am fighting my shadow when there is absolutely no need for that. There are worse problems than my poor little ego around on the planet. The most effective way to get rid of a shadow is to shine light on it, fight it with happiness and don’t let the negativity get you down. You might think that getting past yourself is impossible, at least you know every single trick of yours, but a shadow is just a pathetic poor and colourless version of you, so move on!

So now that I have successfully cheered myself up I should really write that paper that I’m not going to mess up, just because I failed another paper! I’m better than I was and I’m better than my failure

Cheerio.

Liberate yourself

There is this episode of the TV series "How I met your mother" in which they say that every person has their own baggage to carry. They take that quite literally with displaying heavy bags that with one person even piled up. That episode stood out to me especially (apart from me being a series junky of course) as I'm very familiar with that metaphor as I had a best friend who considered himself a carrier. We used that word between us to describe how people would always come to him and ask for advice, thus leaving whatever they had on their shoulders on his. As of recently I've had that topic back in my mind due to the things that were happen around me.

It kind of started with a conversation at a bar. I wish the story was as cool at it begins (bars do still sound cool to me, ok?), but it was not that special after all. Two friends and I went to a bar and talked for more than two hours. When at first we just chatted, at some point it became deeper. We started talking about how former experience changed the person we are now and that due to what happened in the past we act different in the present. At some point one of them said how it affected them specific. I never saw that person in that light even though I was familiar with their story. I did not think that the whole situation had such a deep impact on them. Finally my personal conclusion from this conversation was that some baggage is good, keeps us to the ground and reminds us of who we are supposed to be, whereas others ties us back when all we are supposed to do is rise up and leave it behind, forever. 

That's easier said than done. I mean I have tried various times to get over some issues that I've been aware of for a while now and about every blue moon they come up again, triggered by the most random things. It happened again last Friday. Again, a late night, good conversations with dear friends. Eventually one of my friends started to talk about a personality test he took that sorts you into one out of nine categories. We did not actually take a test; we just read some aspect of each type and thus decided who were thought we were. When I read the full description of what I figured was mine I was actually close to tears. Actually I was very much in shock. There were things described that I've never actually realized this way before. I got home that night and I was so confused and emotionally touched it left me with little sleep only.

One of the things that I realized was that as a person who has a ridiculously good memory is that I do not only hold on to the nice ones. I try to forgive quickly and most of the times it works but you know... Sometimes I fail. So this week I found myself buried deep down in confusion, thoughts, and well, sadness. In addition to being emotional anyway I also had the pleasure to give my beloved cat to an animal centre. It sucked and all that and well, added up to my momentarily malaise. Nothing huge, just a reason to eat a lot of chocolate, watch pride & prejudice and after that, finally getting back to being functional again.

Today I got up at half past six, cleaned my whole room and got rid of some things. I can me somewhat of a stockpiler and well, sometimes you need to draw the line in order to feel free of what should be left behind. No point of keeping everything that has the tiniest emotional value to you, measure what you really want to keep, cut out the rest completely, once and for all. Well at least I needed to do that. Getting rid of the cat tree was necessary for me, as was throwing away a very certain pen, some written pages and a tiny scrap. Nope, they were not connected, but all of those things I knew I couldn't keep around anymore if I wanted to finish those things up. During that process I felt it, like a weight lift.

I'm not sure if this concluded the way I wanted it too, but I kind of had to write about it here. Be aware of your past, but don't clamp to it and believe that you cannot do something just because of what happened previously. Find the right balance I guess.

Cheerio.

Selfie Time

I'm not sure if this is something everyone can relate to, if it's a girl problem or if it's just me who is affected by it, but let me tell you something. Sometimes I look in the mirror not just to check that I don't have any stains on my clothes or to check my face for leftover toothpaste, but in order to really look at me. As a matter of fact I assume that every single person who knows me has probably more of an idea about my face, its shape and generally how I look than I do. Sometimes when I share one of these intense looks with my own reflection it happens that I do not even recognize me anymore. Or maybe that's just the moment where I can truly see all my features unlike those short glimpses I get throughout the day.

Usually when I take a little more time to look at myself I start to see every flaw. I don't have pure skin, there is this scar on my forehead and I think that my face is genuinely not what I consider good looking. Of course there are also things about my body that I dislike, which add up to my vain unhappiness. I mean I know that I could do more for myself and I'd probably look better, I could wear more make-up, use skin care more regularly and dress better, but even though I think about these things doesn't mean that I think I should do them every day.

There are also other days luckily, in which I can't help but compliment myself, like for example the colour of my eyes, for how my hair lies or sometimes a shirt that I bought that suits me. Getting a compliment from a friend is cool and feels nice, but getting one from my harshest critic, me, feels just as good. Sometimes one of these I-kind-of-do-not-dislike-myself-that-much days can lead up to some pampering.

Sometimes I start to paint my nails, just because I can. I do not care on most days, yes, but I can enjoy treating myself with some make-up or nail polish from time to time. It might not end then; sometimes I want to embrace that good feeling even more so I start to look into my wardrobe for the right piece to enhance my beauty. When I found it I look into the mirror again. It's the same person I considered ugly the day before, the very same features, but my perspective has changed. It happens that I spend minutes just standing there, trying to understand why I can feel so different about my own body that has not really changed but just feels different. From time to time I'm done at this point, looking and trying to figure out my own self, but it there are also moments when I move on to another Level.

I hate photos of me. I don't mean I dislike pictures of me and my friends, I love them. I just don't like me alone in a photo. There are only two moments when it's ok for me to take a picture of myself. Firstly when my profile picture on facebook is so outdated that I managed to change my hairstyle twice since taking the last one (trust me, that did happen way too often) and secondly when I feel beautiful. As a result I have probably more selfies than you'd expect, but most of them were taken on about six days throughout my entire life.

Let me tell you, giving yourself an ego-selfie-photo shoot is a real joy. Some of my pictures look very very bad so I delete them just after taking, but others are very nice ones too. Don't be embarrassed to pose a little; no one is ever going to see them anyway, unless you decide to share them. Enjoy your own body, feel unashamed. Try out different angles, pull faces or use filters, whatever pleases you. Don't listen to anyone, not even yourself, when they tell you you're worthless or ugly as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you dislike cameras as much as I do then face it anyway, you don't want to look at all the beautiful photos of your friends and pretend all of them look incredibly good and you are the ugly duckling. It's not true. And remember, one thing is for sure, a picture says more than a thousand words.

Cheerio.