Jen just jen

full :: transparency
2018-12-30 04:36:02 (UTC)

chutes & ladders ya'll

So maybe the agony I'm having over this next life choice isn't actually about the living at home versus moving away. Honestly I feel so invested in either choice that I'm afraid the truth is plain; I'd rather invest in a future vision than me, presently.

I think the problem is better articulated if it's acknowledged about finding hope, or rather, direction and hope for my life..

I just feel like an amorphous, unaccountable blob mostly. My brain doesn't want to change into 'being' anybody- it likes the comfort of being it's own without imposed need for changing. Although I can coax it into being 'better' and by that I mean less selfish, more forgiving, and just more aware generally, these are things that require a baseline motivation.
An impetus for running.

Which, I have, locked away under the rubble of shame for my abandoning that college living-for-the-future life. I'm self-hating already. This has become a marked event in my life that's become troublesome to forgive. It's become a bitter part of me. Because college was never supposed to be so tough. It was a given in the order of events set out for me.
But I made it so. I was given the tools to think on my own and I overthought things.
That's not true; I just want to take things with respect to myself, and I felt college wasn't taking things at my pace really.
That's not true; It's just I didn't have the wherewithal to go through all that pushing myself to grow without someone to support me;
and maybe that's closer to the truth, except I've always been alittle flaky, and the stress and pressure that came with growing into my own rapidly became my undoing- I retreated to the flakiness I'd been before; and I'd forgotten the hungry drive I had for living intentionally.

I really don't like what this all means to me. I thought I could live with giving up on college. I thought it could mean nothing to me, and I could take my mental gains from it elsewhere, as it had done a lot of good for me and I wanted to work on continuing that growth outside of the stressful college living. But I felt cursed from the moment I turned my back on that dream. It's not even that I owe it a piece of me. It's that I just had trouble forgiving me and it cemented into a greater undoing of myself. I felt like I couldn't bring that cursed knowledge of myself anywhere because I hadn't earned the ability to keep hold.

I know that I keep speaking in this foreboding, vindictive tone. I can't escape it, I suppose that's what happens when you give up hope for being your best being.
ew.
Is it that simple?
Is Jordan Peterson right?

My fingers feel sluggish and my eyes feel saggy.

So, thing is, until about two years ago, the events in my life weren't entirely going pleasantly anyway. I had finished 8 weeks of counseling which was painful and felt sort of dead-end-y. I was told a lot about how I clearly have a lot of pain (I couldn't make effective eye contact, I said 'I don't know a lot,' there was excessive crying) and that I had a right to my emotions. I was talking in circles about my mother and my best friend, how they were failing me. But it became more and more evident that it was I who was failing myself. By not setting myself free of those confining relationships I kept myself suffering, and it was doing them no good either because they also would need to be set free of my expectations and needs to grow.

So at that turning point, and at the point that the weight of my terrible relationship with my roommate was lifted when she left, I started taking it upon myself to change me. I mean, I had taken it upon myself before with the counseling and attending class and being responsible before, but when she left I had more time to me. But when she left I realized I would have to forgive myself more frequently. The time spent alone in my room amplified and at times the silence felt deafening. But with that I became acutely aware of my own thoughts. I started to sit in the discomfort of silence with my thoughts just so I could do my best to set them straight. It was hard, being alone. Especially since I felt so incapable of reaching out amongst a whole campus of people surrounding me.

But slowly things started to change. I learned that I could rely on the deepest feeling that vibrated within me. It was often tinged with a deep sense of concern or just plain sadness. Sometimes it gave me a sense that I was desperately in need of companionship. But that was true, and I learned to appreciate the presence of other human beings properly in that time. I learned that it's important to make space for other people's troubles in your brain before you even go out into the world. It means minimizing yourself.
I have trouble with this today.

I have trouble with paring down to the deepest feeling. I'm often afraid of what it will say- as I often find it's initial intensity too much to contain. And then the honesty of finding a way to believe that we are all connected brings me dissonance at the point where I am supposed to connect with the world.

I hold this resentment over the part where I failed to give up what was bothering me. When I broke up with that first boy I held onto that pain so tightly, that it was hard to ask for the help to let it go. I took it like it was a pill I deserved- not just from my actions in that situation, but from the whole of my living. I took it like it was a testament of faith to my worst self or something.

And I know all of these things, that the way I didn't seek out the things I needed wasn't right. Because I should never expect the world to give me what I need unless I'm already on a path for the betterment outside of me. And I thought I was. I just veered off course. Lost focus.
Here I am.

I say all of these things, but in the tightness of that pain, when I tried to love a guy I didn't like with the openness of my heart, and when I retreated my confused, misguided self back into the lost comfort of chasing a dream, It's just discombobulating. I supposed the dream I had was never about college or becoming better exactly, but something else entirely.

I wonder if what condemns me so badly now is that the whole start of this journey sort of began as a reaction to a promise I made to myself long ago. That if I ever get around to living, I'd make good on being the best person I can possibly be. That's a lonely endeavor.
But, I wonder, if that's my only, biggest dream.

Welp. That's nothing that can't be solved with a lot of living. It's a naive way of seeing myself, and the world. and gall darn if I'm gonna let it destroy me. But tbh I still haven't overcome it by learning how to accept (and be responsible for) there person I am. so.

my question, though, is what hope is there for living if you don't have hope that you're living your best life? (the one that will get you into heaven)

I suppose we can find hope in each other, the strength in our own faults and such which inspire a humility to keep going pleasantly. For the betterment of others is a fine enough answer. But Given that life itself is a lonely, personal endeavor, what drives a person to get up and live on their own accord but living perfectly?
Or is it living imperfectly? Living their own perfect version of imperfection? who knows.
I do.
it's about maintaining a personal level of truth.

Maybe I could just repent about what I have sinned and move on and continue to live my best life.
I could've done that a year and a half ago.
welp, silly me.
I think giving up on my life was more about suspending working for hope that one day I would fall into circumstances that would make it easier. But I think 'easy' isn't supposed to be anywhere near the goal here. It's about building strength, and building it with pace and reason which support it's growth (not deterioration). You know, the brain is a muscle after all. (I think)




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