Me, Myself and I

I understand. My sadness is small. I am still the product of privilege. There hasn’t been a death or a natural disaster. There hasn’t been a divorce or a cancer diagnosis or a home-turf war. I know that, in the grand scheme of the world and its many hardships and cruelties, my sadness is small. But it is also three-dimensional. It has depth and width and length; it has angles that expand to fill every room I drag it into. It feels like my hope went cliff jumping, miscalculated the distance, and broke every bone. It feels like the bottom of the paper bag of my self as I knew it has ripped open and the fruit that has fallen to the sidewalk is too bruised to salvage. And then I am made more miserable by the indisputable fact that this happens to everyone, and it’s not a big deal, and why can’t I be more resilient, have some perspective, quit sulking, and just join OkCupid already? There ain’t no party like a pity party, ‘cause a pity party don’t stop. No, really. It won’t stop. How do I make it stop?

However,

The more time I spend thinking late at night before the melatonin kicks in…the more I am convinced that we should all take time to be in a relationship with ourselves. At this point in my life, it’s challenging enough trying to figure out my own wants and needs without juggling the wants and needs of another.This is the one chance in your life that you get to completely decide what direction you want your life to travel in. Do you want to explore Germany and learn how to make sauerkraut? Do you want to dedicate your extra time and energy to volunteering and impact the lives of others? Do you want to dedicate yourself to your professional life and get the experience you need to take yourself to the next level?

That’s up to you to decide and the best part is…it’s only your decision. This is the time in your life when you are supposed to be selfish. Embrace the selfishness. Savor every moment spent trying to figure out who you are and what you want. Take chances. Take lots of them. Spend time with people that you normally wouldn’t spend time with. Discover new hobbies. And most of all do whatever it is that makes you happy and don’t regret a second of it.

a simple lesson

I never believed much in “signs”. Maybe it’s because I never received one, or looked for one to be honest. But I got one last night, at least that’s what I think it was. It was either that or a wicked slap in the face.

A distant, acquaintance I guess you could call him, who I haven’t spoken to in months, somehow got me to listen. He made a point that my closest friends have tried to make for so long. I don’t know if I needed to hear it from someone else, someone who didn’t know everything about my life, but for whatever reason, he got through to me.

It’s a simple lesson: listen to your problems instead of running away from them. Stop pretending like you don’t care and start taking responsibility for your emotions. Respect them and pay attention to them before they lead you into a downward spiral.

I don’t know why I have always thought that I needed to appear tough, make it seem like things don’t phase me. People know me as someone who can handle a lot and someone who manages to laugh through it all. I think once people knew me as that type of person, I didn’t want to let them down. I didn’t see a reason to change the way I handled things. At least not until last night when I realized how bad it could get.

I’ve been told many times that I’m cold and blank. I rarely show emotion and when things happen, I don’t take the time to deal with them. I either pretend things are not a big deal or pretend they aren’t happening. It’s a vicious cycle of denial.

A vicious cycle that I’m determined to end.

I’ve come to realize that standing emotionless after a slap in the face is not true strength. Strong people don’t ignore every negative experience and let it eat at them from the inside out. Running from your emotions and hiding them behind the 10 foot walls you’ve built around yourself is not strong. It is a defense for the weak. And it is a defense that can only last for so long until your walls come crumbling down on you.

Strong people don’t build walls. They don’t deny their feelings. They embrace them and then tackle their problems head on.

All this time I thought I was strong for handling all that’s been thrown at me. I realize now that I’ve been weaker than most. I understand what my friends have been trying to get me to understand for so long. They don’t want to break down walls. They don’t want a cold friend who is incapable of showing emotion. They want to see that I’m human that I can react like everyone else.

Here I am thinking I need to keep my feelings bottled up so I don’t let people down. What I see now is that I’ve let a lot of people down. I’ve ruined relationships because I never seemed like I cared enough. I look back and see that I did care but I just couldn’t show it.

I think we all need to hear this lesson. Maybe we need an experience, maybe just an encounter with someone who has experienced first hand what its like for all those walls to come crashing down. Whatever it may be, whoever it may be, listen. We’ve all got a lot to learn and if we don’t learn to embrace how we feel, we may stop feeling all together

thought catalog

An Hour

An hour, one hour, can change everything forever. An hour can save your life. An hour can change your life. Sometimes an hour is a gift we give ourselves. For some, an hour can mean almost nothing. For others, an hour makes all the difference in the world. But in the end, it's still just an hour. One of many. Many more to come. Sixty minutes. Thirty-six hundred seconds. That's it. Then it starts all over again. And who knows what the next hour might hold.

the truth is

The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that that situation is over, you cannot move forward.

IS THE SITUATION OVER?

I want to punch you in the ovaries

I want to punch you in the ovaries!!!!

I wish I can write down everything here and everyone can read it. So that every single one of you will know how I'm feeling right now. But I can't. And I wont.

If you want to know, you can talk to me. Let's have a conversation.

Gratitude, appreciation, giving thanks. No matter what words you use, they all mean the same thing. Happy. We're supposed to be happy. Grateful for friends, family. Happy just to be alive. Whether we like it or not. Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. 

Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.

some day

So, i've been thinking about this whole being happy thing, and i feel like people get lost when they think of happiness as a destination...We're always thinking that someday we'll be happy, we'll get that car or that job or that person in our lives that'll fix everything. But happiness is a mood, and it's a condition, not a destination. it's like being tired or hungry, it's not permanent. It comes and goes, and that's okay, And i feel like if people thought of that way, they'd find happiness more often.

Can't fight this feeling

There are some feelings that refuse to go away, they're little distractions whispering in you ear. Some things just get under your skin. Try as you might, you can't ignore your instincts. It's like they say, always follow your intuitions.

I don't know what it was

I don't know what it was that made me love you. Or what it was that made you hate the way you do. I remember what you said and compare it to what you did and it never made sense. You were there and then you weren't. You had my heart and i had yours. you said it was love and so i stayed. Maybe it was too much. maybe it wasn't enough. But I will never forget the way you made me feel like i was everything and i will never forget the way you made me feel like i was nothing.

Negotiation

They say there's one sure sign of a successful negotiation. It's that when the parties leave the table, they both feel like they've been screwed. The goal is a compromise. A situation where everybody wins.They say that negotiation is an art form. Yet, when we negotiate, we have a strategy, we use tactics. Strategies and tactics aren't words we use for seeking a compromise. These are words for going to war.