Jen just jen

full :: transparency
2020-03-18 06:43:34 (UTC)

I've needed this break ..

I've needed this break from school. Not that I'm not doing classes online. I just needed a break from routine that I wasn't going to give myself any time soon. At least, a break from the routine I was falling into again.

It was that depression routine, where I lose touch with myself again. And it's hard to capture the feeling exactly, except that it just amounts to me, reduced to a pile of external expectations and whether I'm meeting them or not. The work it takes to not let me fall into that, on top of a course load and work is more than I can handle. And I often don't know where to begin.
and

It's just now that I've had some time to do things I wouldn't normally- I went on a hike with the roommates today, for example- my perspective changes again and I see how things don't have to be coated in the same drudgery that slid me through weeks at a time before.

I was reminiscing on cedar point days and I remember the time I was supervisor, and for the first few weeks I started to slip into this overload coping mode, and people would tell me how much of an asshole I was becoming, and I started to see their reactions as a gauge for how well I was taking care, and it informed me quite a bit. Nowadays I suppose I try to block it out, because it feels like just another thing I can't expect myself to handle.

I don't know how to dig myself out of this roadblock of feeling like these things are just one more to add onto my pile of expectations.

I keep trying to put the novel expectations- school, work- first, just so I appear like I'm showing up to my life for me. But really, I don't know where my life is actually. I worry I'm letting this valuable time with my roommates slip by easily, not valuing it like I really want to (because I don't even know how to value time like I really want to).

And I let myself pass up moments to validate my truth and learn how to stand for myself within myself again. Because it's a whole fucking mountain I'm afraid of climbing again, and I just use society's narrative of who I should be against myself, and unlearn listening to my needs as a way of self harm.

This isn't the tangent I meant to go on when I was thinking of this earlier. I remember reminiscing on cedar point days and remembering truths about who I was that I forgot. How I felt woven into the fabric of people there, and how I really put an effort into building that concept up for me. But moreso, I was comparing that to how I could make that work today, and it's harder, since choosing to show up here is more of a tricky thing.

And also, showing up encompasses more layers of me untangling my dismissive avoidant tendancies.
I was remembering how this asshole depressive coping mechanism is an expression of my own dismissive avoidant tendencies, and there is a way to weave myself back into the fabric of community when I can remember that these thoughts I have learned to adapt to cope are just expressions of fear that aren't me.

Mostly, I was trying to remember how to replace these thoughts with better thoughts. Thoughts of inspired appearance in my own life (is often what escapes me in these times) are hard to generate on little faith, and I know there were times when I learned to stand in a faith of.
something, although I can't quite place.

There is a vision I had once where I could put myself together for days and work toward. And I don't know now where it went.
It felt like scraping the bottom of an empty bucket some mornings, when I'd get out of bed and have to stare hard at the morning sky over a cup of coffee before I started to feel a bit of warmth. I know it wasn't easy at all, probably all it was was momentum, built up. And maybe that's all it'll ever be.


But I'm wondering now how to get that grounded feeling again, so that I don't just feel like I'm drowning constantly. I don't know if I have to find something to inspire me to rise above, or where I should begin to look and push for a risk that would be something worth trying for.

The idea of finding a risk just to inspire me is exhausting, since I feel like I have so much in me I need to tend to. And mostly I just want to spend this coronavirus time building up a safe space for myself so that I can finally feel safe enough to explore my own feelings in real time.

///

and that's finally what I wanted to write about. I feel lately this suppression of how sad I really am. I know it's shameful that I still have these sad feelings, especially now that I'm 'safe' I feel I've reached this place in my life, with these roommates who are so much like me, where i'm just affirmed. but
I'm still broken in a lot of ways. And it's terrifying how I'm still going to have to find my own path to put myself together. Most days I find myself crumbling this wall just to cling to their walls, and it's not exactly a thriving way to live. Like, I'm not actually building a relationship as much as I am still running from my own feelings.

I'm not actually learning as much as I am trying to stay away from the emotions that would take all my attention.

I don't know how to do both. Academia suffocates my permission I need to grant myself to live life actually. And that alone takes all my efforts.
And academia takes all my efforts too, because it's really not the first priority to me but it is the important priority.
And I wish I could do both. Commit myself to a life of both academic and emotional thriving. would be amazing.
and a whole goddamn perspective shift. And I don't even know where to begin there.

//

and on corona time I technically would have a hole another hour or so to explore this, but,
I do have a project to turn in tomorrow morning and I'd like to get sleep tonight. so this will do.




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