what i'm not saying.

Most days it’s not an act. People think that being the bubbly, happy girl is putting on a front, that nobody could be that peppy and optimistic. But usually, I just am. I can’t really explain it. I know that life is full of hardship and crummy situations, but for the most part I just don’t think about those things on a regular basis. Life is shiny and wonderful, meant to be enjoyed and lived. I absolutely cannot understand pessimism – why, if you have the option to think positively or negatively without knowing the outcome of something, would you possibly want to purposefully make yourself miserable? That’s what I see pessimism as, a willingness to be unhappy.

My day to day activities keep me occupied. I’m distracted with television shows, blogs to read, AIM conversations that make me laugh until I cry and e-mails about plans to see my friends that excite me. Whatever I’m doing, my mind is not on my problems.

The issue with this is that I’m unconsciously holding it all in. Everything that bothers me gets pushed to the side by my nature to be happy. It’s not something I force, not at all – sometimes I wish I could have my moment in the middle of the day in front of someone. But I don’t.

I don’t until it’s 2am, there’s nobody around, and I find myself falling down a vicious well of self-hatred. I crumple into a ball – in the shower, on my bed, just sitting on the floor – and I cry. I cry and cry, over everything and nothing. I cry because I’m sick, because everything I try seems not to work, because I’m afraid I’m never going to feel better ever again. I cry because I feel worthless – I disappoint everyone, whether it’s by canceling plans or simply the fact that I can’t get a job.

I cry because no matter how many friends or family members tell me I’m something special, that I have something amazing to offer the world, I just don’t believe them. I’m a living, walking definition of mediocrity – good at many things, but not great at anything. I desperately want to believe my friends, to see what they see, but something is there that stops me. That aspect of my life is a total farce. I’m able to tell people that I know I’m awesome, but it’s a cover-up.

Somewhere along the way, sometime in college, I lost the ability to believe in myself.

I could see that I was throwing away my college education by skipping class and never studying, but I was unable to stop myself. I couldn’t put the right pieces together and figure out how to utilize my time best and be productive. I knew - and was reminded ad nauseam by my parents - that I had the potential and the intelligence to succeed. It was something I should have been able to control, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t because of circumstance or outside influences – it was all me. And because I couldn’t do it, I lost confidence in my ability to do anything.

Around this time, I stopped dancing. Dance was the single solitary thing in my life that I was constantly good at. I could pick up choreography that girls had learned for months in one night. I could do pirouettes and a near-perfect switch leap; I could put on my game face for hip hop and bring elegance to lyrical dancing. It was something I worked terribly hard at, and I saw amazing results. If I couldn’t do something right the first time, I practiced until I did. I put passion into everything I did and because of it, I received handfuls of compliments from people I didn’t even know at the ends of recitals.

I’ve never known how to channel that effort into anything else and, once that part of my life was over, I had settled into mediocrity. That’s where I stay, almost stuck, unable to figure out how to get out.

all smiles.

The past few days have been incredibly lovely.

Making and sending packages has to be the best thing in the world. On Wednesday I had the inspiration to make up a little care package for my cousin, who has finals in a week or so. I packed away some cute post-its, a box of brownies, a bag of Smarties and a little tube of glow-stick bracelets that I scored at Target for just a dollar. Then on Thursday I finally passed on the shoes I'd gotten for Christmas, which were too small, to Stephany, and I put together a birthday gift for Melissa and mailed it in a much bigger box than necessary. All of it put a smile on my face because I know how fun it is to get a package and I got all excited just thinking about everyone getting their gifts.

Today, I took advantage of the beautiful weather and worked on some outdoor projects. I used the weed whacker on the perimeter of the backyard (awesome arm workout, by the by) and continued work on the stripping and refinishing of my brother's bureau. But in between, I settled down with my magazines and took pictures because the weather was too good not to just sit and enjoy it.

Here's a sampling of the photos I took. If happiness came in colors, it would be the combination of this exact sky blue and the green of the leaves on the trees.

not quite there yet.

Sometimes I miss him, most times not. And, it's not necessarily missing him - I miss things. I miss the drive to his house, his quirky parents, playing Yahtzee and baking snickerdoodles. I miss watching Mythbusters together and having sleepovers at my house. I feel like that's not really missing him, but the experiences we had together. Or are those one in the same?

The other day I looked back on some early e-mails, the ones where we had big disagreements and wrote long e-mails back and forth. They made me so angry. We started our relationship on really shaky footing and unfortunately, the issues we had left most of my friends and family with a bad taste in their mouths. I was angry at him for being that way, angry at myself for not standing up for my side of things and instead going to my family and friends to complain. I was angry it even mattered at all - that the opinions of the people closest to me mattered even though they didn't know the whole story.

On the other hand, I sometimes feel like I'm throwing all the goodness away, that I'm only seeing the bad and not enough of the good that's truly there. There's a lot of good there that I'm just tossing aside with the hopes that something better will come along. I'm afraid that the risk of losing him is too high considering the amount of confidence I have in finding someone who clicks better with me, which is very low.

So, I'm mostly confused. I'm not sad anymore, at least not most of the time, but I can't figure out where I stand. It's somewhere in between being over him and not, being ready to be friends and not, missing him and not. It's been three weeks now and I guess this is a good place to be - getting there, but not quite there yet (wherever "there" is).

my week in photos & videos.

Some things that happened this week, because I felt like posting but didn't have anything to say. Friday laziness at it's best, no?

• I pulled out my old PS2 games, including the most epic game ever, Britney Spears Dance Beat.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• In the spirit of old-school B.Spears, and because I had the house to myself Wednesday night, I danced around to 90s pop princess and boy band music. Especially this:
  
  
  
  
• I took pictures of weeds. Judge me all you want, I still think they're pretty.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We threw away a bunch of old furniture. I took more pictures.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I got a kick-ass new planner from erincondren.com. I'm in love.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I became totally obsessed with this song.
  
  
  
  

Blog Swap 7: Why I Blog.

Hello dear readers. Today, as part of the 20SB Blog Swap, you're getting a treat - a post from the wonderful Mel! Play nice, leave love, and if you like what she has to say, you can check her out at her regular gig, Mel Learns Her Lessons (you can also find me over there for today). And away we go!

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For me, any post titled “why I blog”, could just as easily be called “why I don’t do anything else”. You see, I’m not the sort of person who does things.

Instead, I blog about doing things.

It all stems from the sorry combination of being a chronic procrastinator and having the desperate need to feel like my life has some significance.

I’ve always been deeply in awe of those creative types who just get out there and do stuff. Take, for example, the maker of this scrumptious piece of frockiness. "Self taught through experimentation, an artist's vision, and hands on execution, Kate Towers creates non-seasonal, one of a kind pieces."

Now, most people would go about learning to be a fashion designer by enrolling in a dressmaking class, or at least finding someone's Nan to teach them about pintucks and button holes.

Our Miss Kate, on the other hand, put the jug on to boil, sat down at her sewing desk, took a deep breath and learned to make dresses.

And me? I would wikihow "become a fashion designer", add it to my 43 things list, blog for a bit and then give up.

It all makes me wonder... what might I have accomplished if I stopped talking about all the stuff I want to do, rolled up my sleeves and just did something? Oh, shall we ever know the answer to that question?

Hm… sounds like a great idea for my next blog post.

jury duty, updated!

A few weeks ago, I got a piece of mail that sent me into a panic.

Jury duty. Tomorrow.

Under normal circumstances, I would have no problem serving my civic duty. It would probably be cool to actually get picked and sit on a jury. I know it's really not that exciting, but it would be an interesting experience.

However. I'm not dealing with "normal" circumstances. My anxiety is at an all-time high and my stomach is in no condition for me to be sitting around all day in a stressful situation. I know being called for jury duty and even serving is no reason to panic or freak out, but I'm not your typical every day girl, and the most random shit stresses me out.

I've been dreading it for weeks now, half-heartedly trying to go on a stomach-friendly diet the past few days, and crossing my fingers that I'll call the night before and won't even have to go in (which is the process in NJ, not sure if it's the same in other states). The fact that I have to report at 8am makes everything worse because that's my stomach's least favorite time of day to act normal. I'm up at the early (for me) hour of 7am today so that, hopefully, I fall asleep early and can wake up absurdly early so that I have time to feel better before heading out.

My mom has assured me it really won't be as bad as I'm imagining it, that once I get there I'm going to settle in and realize it's just a big time suck. My hope is that (if I call and I do have to go in) I won't even get picked from the masses so I can go home and not have to worry about explaining myself to anyone.

Because I don't even want to think about that.

Anyone want to share their non-exciting jury duty experiences to make me feel better?

UPDATE: So, turns out all that panicking was for nothing. I checked the website and my number is way past the cutoff, which means I don't even have to go in tomorrow! I am so relieved it's not even funny.

realization.

It's taken me a little over a week, but reality has finally settled comfortably into my mind regarding my break-up. I can't really tell you if the past week and a half was denial - to me, it was just a lack of realization. The Boy and I had had breaks in the past, so it just felt like another one of those. Obviously I knew it wasn't the same, but there was nothing that was making this time different.

Yesterday we talked for the first time since we broke up. The deal was that we wouldn't, but somehow we ended up on gchat at three in the morning. I don't regret it; I feel like it brought some closure to everything. It didn't happen immediately - at first I was angry because he felt better after talking, but I still clung to my emotions. Part of me wanted to stay hurt, confused and sad, because I'm stubborn like that.

He told me things that have made him feel better, like focusing on bettering his life, realizing we don't know what the future holds, and understanding that this break up was bound to happen sooner or later. Mentally, I kicked and screamed at that, calling it a bunch of bullshit. I wanted so badly to hold onto my thought that maybe this was all a big mistake. I was livid. He went to bed happy and here I was, restless and bitterly crying into my pillow.

It was already 4am by the time our talk was over and I spent a good hour moping around my room. I wasn't the least bit tired, so I distracted myself with a workout and breakfast. When I came back to my room, I was still sad but was at least ready to sleep. I could very well have stayed up - in fact, I should have because I was supposed to work - but I knew I would keep feeling miserable and it would get worse as I stayed up longer without sleep. So I had another train wreck day where I slept well into the late afternoon hours.

I felt incredibly guilty doing this again, because this is exactly what I did the day after our break up. I didn't feel like another day like this was warranted. In the end, though, it was the best thing I could have done. I woke up feeling a lot better, with all the things he'd said the night before settling into my heart. The permanence was clearer and the fact that it wasn't a mistake and that we weren't getting back together anytime soon was made more concrete in my mind.

I think that today, I'm emotionally where I thought I was going to be last week. Last night was when I felt absolutely inconsolable, when I wanted my friends to cry to and hug. Today I'm much less upset, but I'm finally at the point where I feel like it's really over. And although it's sad, it's a peaceful place to be.

not another false start.

Oh hey April, how nice to see you! Way to sneak up on me. Yeah, yeah, I know I said that March was my month... and in a way, maybe the break up was the first step of my fresh start. One of the big reasons for splitting was that we both decided I need to be sans relationship for now and conquer my health issues solely for myself. So now, I have no excuses at all.

There are goals floating around in my head that I need to sit down and put on paper this week. I'm absolutely terrible at coming up with firm resolutions, so it's going to take some time for me to think about them and force myself to get at least a few out of my brain. Overall, I just need to get better.

With all of my health problems, I'm in a situation in which I never expected to be. Whether it's anxiety, my IBS, or a combination of both, I feel extremely limited in what I can do on a daily basis. I feel handicapped. Feeling this way at age 23 just doesn't sit right with me and it's time I do something about it.

I feel like I've written this post about a billion times so I know it sounds redundant. I'm getting sick of writing it, then coming back to it and realizing I've made no progress. This time will be different. There will be meal planning, cutting back on processed food, drinking more water, and exercising more. I'll maintain a normal sleeping pattern, go to work on a regular schedule, and eventually get back to looking for (and scoring) a real job.

I'm looking forward to feeling better, to feeling normal again.

[I want to say again, thank you for all the support. I'm having a hard time finding words to really talk about it to anyone - with the exception being actually blogging about it, because that's more like talking to myself - so I apologize for not reaching out to each of you personally. But seriously, thank you so much.]

day 3.

I've been trying to write a post in my head over the past few days, but I don't really have much to say. What I do want to say is that I am so thankful to anyone who commented on the last post or tweeted me. I really, truly appreciate it. Cookies and hugs for all! (Except not real cookies, because I can't send them through the internet. I would totally bake some for you, though.)

So the obvious question is, how am I? I'm okay and not okay. I'm sad and happy. Everything's normal, yet everything is different. I check my phone too many times over the course of a day, expecting a text message. It's a little harder to fall asleep at night and sometimes a little harder to get up in the morning, but otherwise my days floats by as it always has, filled with chores and wasting away time on the internet.

When there's a noticeable, tangible difference in the course of my day, I definitely feel it. The missing text messages suck. Not having a blinking IM box at the bottom of my screen sucks. He was that one person who I was always in contact with and it's a stark difference from my communication with my other friends, which has always been irregular and unscheduled - I don't have another friend with whom I exchange daily text messages or nightly Skype calls. That's the hardest because that's a big gap that I can't fill with something or somebody else.

My lack of sadness is probably a little bit of denial mixed with my desire to avoid feeling bad for myself. It's only the third day in, so it hasn't really hit me that this really happened. We made the decision to avoid contacting each other for a month so that we can process the breakup and come back with the fresh outlook of being friends. Maybe I'll start to feel it after another week or so, or, maybe I won't.

On top of that, I'm the kind of person that hates having a pity party for myself because of what it does to me. I had a few of those moments in the past six months about my health, and it's not a good place for me. Everything negative about my life springs up in my mind and I eventually turn those into irrational predictions about my life (like, I kept thinking that I was always going to be sick, that my friends would get tired of coming to my house, and I'd be friendless forever and ever).

So, that's where it stands. Don't worry, I'm not going to talk about this to death because wouldn't that be terribly boring. In other news, the weather has been delicious and I am absolutely loving it. Seventy degrees?! More, please!