Monday, August 31, 2009

fear

Have you ever been afraid? I mean really and truly afraid? Not like eek there's a spider afraid- no what I'm talking about is fear so great that it consumes you. That kind of fear is something that you can't shake just by squashing a bug or by buying a nightlight. It's something that sometimes can't be concord at all. That is the kind of fear that I am suffering from right now.

I am afraid of failing. I know that everyone says that but I am truly afraid to fail. My whole life I have felt second rate compared to my brothers the brain and the athlete. I've always thought that no matter how successful I was at something one of them would always find some way to be more successful. This is where I think the root of my fear of failure began.

However that fear was some what temporarily subdued in college when I found that when put in the right academic setting I was actually very bright. I had stellar grades and lots of friends- I had the life that I imagined my brothers had always had. But my fear roared it's ugly head again on May 17, 2009. That was the day I graduated.

With that diploma in hand all my fears came rushing back to me. What if I can't get a job? What if I'm not smart enought to survive in the real world? What if college was my peak? All those questions and more went blurring through my mind. My parents and friends attempted to calm me telling me that they knew I was bright and no matter what I ended up doing I would excel at it because that is just the kind of person I am.

I know that they were saying those things for two reasons. 1) some of them actually believed what they were saying. They actually thought that whether I ended up being a teacher or a rocket scientist I would excel at it because of my natural intelligence. And 2) they thought that by telling me they knew I would succeed no matter what they were calming that fear they knew had to be growing inside of me. Um well....they were wrong. Not only were they not helping with the fear that I already had- they were helping the fear fester and grow.

You see what I am afriad of now is not just failing- no its the fact that I really don't think that I can live up to all those high expectations people in my life have for me. What if I'm just not that bright and I can't excel at anything? What if I not even bright enough to get a job? What is going to happen when all those people who believed in me find out that I am a fraud and I'm not really what they thought I was? What happens when I realize that for my whole life I was fed bullshit about me being intelligent and smart and capable but in reality I am nothing more then average.

All the compliments in the world are great for building self confidence but in the end they are nothing more then empty statements. And for me they are nothing more then statements that cause me to be painfully afraid of the future, the real world and of growing up.

A year ago I was just starting my senior year in college and I was like the golden child. I had a great GPA, great friends and my parents were glowing with pride. Let's be honest- I was pretty good at the whole college thing. I knew how to do well in my classes while at the same time balancing school with having great friends and a great social life. College was easy- it only took me my freshmen year to master college. But now all the sudden I am like an animal captured and put in the zoo.

I have been stripped of my natural habitate and thrown into another one. Hasta Luego college- hello real world. It's like freshmen year all over again. I feel like a scared 18 year old being left at college. Everyone I know, all my friends, I've had to leave behind. I'm being forced to start over completely and I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. At least in college I had an academic advisor, class schedule and campus map.

They don't make a book called THE REAL WORLD FOR DUMBIES and I'm pretty sure there are no "campus maps" for the real world. I'm not sure that I've ever felt more alone in my life then I do right now. I feel like there are so many decisions that I'm being asked to make and yet I have no idea how to make them. So many questions that life is asking me to answer right now and I have no clue where to find the answers.

And the worst part of all is that when I need my parents the most they aren't really there for me. Yea okay they are giving me a place to live and food to eat- but they aren't giving me the support I need. Their idea of support is setting job application quotas and adding more household responsibilities. Those things are so far from what I need right now I don't think they are in the same universe.

No, what I need from my parents is for them to understand that I am only 21 (almost 22) years old and some of the decisions that they are asking me to make now are going to affect the next 40+ years of my life. I need them to think back to when they were my age and how it felt to have to make huge life decisions. For me it feels like there is a thousand pound weight slowly pushing me further and further into the ground. I am literally more afraid of this then I have been of anything else in my life to date. I'm petrified that I am going to make the wrong decision or some monstrous mistake. And that fear has gotten me to the point that I am doing anything I can to just avoid making any kind of decisions at all.

I have reached the end of my rope and I don't know what to do anymore. I can't go on in fear and yet I'm not sure how to concour this one. All I really know is that I spend a lot of my time on the verge of tears and even more of my time hoping that many minute I'm going to wake up and be back in elementary school...because that's what I want- a do-over. I want a chance to go back and re-live everything because moving backwards is so much easier then moving forwards.

I just want answers and I need advice.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

why boys suck

So tonight i was again reminded why boys suck. Now i know when I say that i should qualify it in a way as to not include those boys/men in my life that don't actually suck such as my father, brothers, grandfather etc... but i feel as thought I don't really need to do that here because an astute reader would know to exclude those individuals. Anyway moving on to why boys suck...

Tonight I had a rather rough night, for reasons of which I will not go into at length here because they are some what besides the point. However, for sake of those readers who really wish to know I'll sum in up quickly. I got a rather unfortunate phone call tonight from a past fling who I'd decided to stay friends with. They had called to tell me that they and the person they were now seeing had had sex tonight and that it was amazing sex...and the conversation goes on from there plummeting me further into depression. This story alone is not why boys suck though. Oh no the reason that boys suck comes later so stay tuned for the next few paragraphs.

So I get this faithful phone call while babysitting at my neighbors house so I attempt to hold it together until the parents come home and I can go wallow at home in my bed. Once home I realize that there is really only one person that I want to talk to about this, my best friend Abby. However that plan is foiled by the fact that she is in fact not living in the country right now therefore she is not reachable. I then decide that for lack of Abby I would go on to ichat in hopes that someone would be online that I am close enough to that I can talk to about this. Well I can't say that that person was on ichat, because lets be honest at 11:30 pm on a Saturday there are not many people on ichat at all. So I was forced to settle for talking to this kid who (for sake of him not feeling like an ass should he ever read this) I will call Ted.

Ted and I are not really that good of friends, in fact that story of how Ted and I became not really friends is an interesting tale that ends with him proving men are dicks and me having a broken heart. The cliff notes version is this: Ted is a good friend of one of my close friends, lets call her Amy. And Amy decided that she thought Ted and I would hit it off so Ted and I began an online affair of sorts. We would talk to each other via the Internet until all hours of the night about all sorts of things. Well after a few weeks of doing this I started to get a crush on Ted and I thought the feel was mutual (mostly because Amy told me it was). Anyway to keep it short I'll skip ahead, one day I am talking to Ted online and he decides to confess that he recently got a girlfriend that he didn't tell me about. Well that kind of crushed me ever so slightly to the point that I absolutely kinda lost it and went off on Ted in a way that I had never gone off on a person before. It was not pretty and the things I said are things that a lady should never say, but he did in fact deserve it. Anyway after that happened Ted and I did not speak for a long time until one day he IMed me and we opened communication back up. I'm not really sure why we did but we did and tonight when I saw that he was online I was actually happy that we had.

So anyway back to why boys suck. So I look through my buddy list and find that Ted is the only person that I see as even close to fit to talk to about this. But I'm not sure how to bring it up with him so I do what most girls do when they want to talk about something but don't want to start the conversation. I put up a depressing away message about having a bad night and blah blah blah. Then I im Ted thinking that he will see it and get the hint to ask me whats wrong. Well Ted is either slow or just a dumb boy and doesn't pick up on the hint. So we are talking awkwardly about nothing really

ME: How was your night
TED: Oh you know
ME: what'd you do?
TED: Not much
ME: Oh slow night?
TED: Ya it was just low-key

And there in those few words was my opening, so I responded with:
ME: I was supposed to have a low key night

From that response he was supposed to get the hint to ask me what happened tonight, and THANK GOD he did. So he asked me what happened and I told him the shortened version and we talked about it for a few minutes but then he goes

TED: Hold on I'm gonna go take a shower

At that point I really wanted to jump through the computer and hit him....really you're mid-conversation with a girl about her having a bad night and you're going to go take a shower! Okay douche bag! But instead of getting angry I just let him go take his shower in hopes that he would come back and want to continue the conversation. BUT NO! He starts talking about showering and what not. And then he goes

TED: Well I'm gonna head to bed so I can get up early to get in a work out.

After saying that he signs off. Wow. Boys Suck. That's all I could think after that. I mean really, I know that we're not that close or anything but you couldn't spare me a few minutes of your life to help make me feel better? I needed someone to talk to and you were who I stupidly pick and after maybe five to ten minutes you decide to sign off. Thanks for nothing jerk off! This situation is exactly why boys suck.

They suck because when you really need them to care they don't. When you need them to listen and offer some kind of advice they decide to shower and go to bed. Okay yes there is a very good possibility that I am writing this all out of rage because I just really need someone to talk to and he wasn't there for me. Or I could just be right about boys sucking. Either way I'm pretty sure this is the longest blog I have written in a really long time. I hope you all enjoyed it and I expect comments to follow.

Good Night All

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

blogging at work

So right now as you read this I am committing what I think could be come a huge sin of the 20st century- I'm blogging at work. That's right there are other things that I should be doing right now but for some reason I can't name, although there is a strong possibility that it could be my ADHD, I am choosing to blog instead of complete my work. Now I am sure that this sin occurs many millions of times a day and the those who commit this sin very rarely feel guilty about what they are doing...so my question is this: should we feel guilty for blogging at work?

I am really if you think about it we are wasting someone else's time and possibly their money, unless of course you are like me and have two jobs that are unpaid. I can't help but feel like if my boss new that I was sitting here writing this instead of doing what was asked of me they would not just be dissappointed in me, but they would actually be hurt. They would be hurt because by blowing off what they asked me to do in order to blog I am essentially disrespecting them via the internet. Right now I am being incrediably disrespectful and yet there will most likely be no punishment for it because besides the people who read this- no one is going to know that I did anything wrong.

I guess that all speaks to the kind of person that I am. I guess by saying that I am comfortable with myself sitting here and blogging that I am the kind of person that doesn't respect authority. Or it says that even know I am spending this whole blog acknowlegding that I know what I'm doing is wrong I am continuing to do it. That I am not self-movitated enough to make myself stop blogging and start working. If that is true I find that depressing and sadening. I don't want to be that person that isn't proud enough to stop doing something disrespectful not because they are going to get caught but just off of prinicpal. I thought I had better morals and stronger convictions then that.

Suddenly I am thinking that the whole subject of this blog is rather contradictory- I mean if I am sitting here writing that I wish i had more conviction that would not allow me to just sit here and blog rather then doing work then why don't I just stop doing it. I mean hello I am openly having this conversation- one that more likely then not would have occured in my head if I didn't put it here- I should just do what I'm saying I should do. I should stop blogging right now...