Jen just jen

full :: transparency
2020-04-18 04:00:04 (UTC)

I can't

I keep falling into this routine where I spend all evening with my roommates and then try at some point to do homework but just can't. Then I'll get back to it later and my mind keeps busy running in loops so I can't slow down and actually work on it, even though I'm sitting in front of it with the intentions to work on it.

It's like my mind keeps chasing this high and doesn't want to crash, and it knows that slowing down to take on the responsibility fully will be a crash..
speaking of, I'm tempted right now to click back on facebook and stalk my ex (it's a stretch I even call him that since I told him we were dating; I didn't even ask, and our relationship wasn't even very far along) (and it's a shame I still let myself mull over the past so much instead of moving on) (probably cus I doubt I'll ever love someone like I was determined to love him) (and god damn) (I just felt him deeply and my mind wouldn't let me take things slow or acknowledge my own hurdles to reaching actual intimacy)
my mind keeps running on this hype it's a mess. I'm starting to sound like my annoying roommate Emily, god bless her, who keeps herself hyped on these energy drinks after work.

It worries me that my roommates keep talking about having a wedding since their relationship is so bad right now. Ashley is pulling more than her load of the responsibilities, Emily's been acting like a child and saying she isn't attracted to Ashley anymore low-key to me, and Ashley is upset they haven't had any physical intimacy in a month or more. It's kind of baffling to me they don't see how their relationship is presently not working for either of them, but I suppose it's confusing when they're determined to keep reliving their glory moments. They talk a lot about the good memories and friends they've met and experienced together and sometimes it makes me feel like they forget that I have no idea what they're talking about.

I'm giving myself a headache mulling over problems that aren't mine. The direct problem in front of me is something I'd rather remain adjacent to, because it challenges more of me than I'd like to admit. Just doing my fucking homework. Sticking to my own plate is more than my share of trouble but it feels like something I can't do alone.

but it's something I should do alone if I ever want a chance at being strong enough to carry the heart of another along with my own.
ugh I just said it. and it hurts. I'm just not willing to slow down enough to feel it. not really. no.

god. re reading this entry is starting to sober me up. but sobriety is a choice. I'm not even drinking alcohol tonight. Just. choosing to be serious and accountable is a hard choice and I'm not too bent on making it rightly.

I'm thinking now back to dave's birthday, and that one particular moment of the night where I asked him if he'd had his quarter life crisis yet.

and now I'm thinking about how I've basically already had mine, once.

but Dave said not quite yet, cus he hadn't turned 25 yet (bold he thinks he'll live ti'll 100) but he then asked when a person should really get their shit together, and his terms were being in a serious committed relationship. I had to wonder here if he was considering making his fling with Nicole serious, or whether this was sort of him hitting on me. But I chose, as I normally do, to take the implications platonically, and just said you gotta know what you're doing with the rest of your life by 27. I don't know how much I mean that, but it has been a thought I've entertained for some time.

I'm wondering if I could fall in love with Dave. He offered to take my new roommates and I out when we all move in together and that seemed like an intimidating offer to me. Like, what did he mean. like

I'm only obsessing over this because I'm lonely. Usually, when I'm around friends and processing this sort of thing it's not such an ordeal of thoughts. It's just that he wants to continue having friends in Kent after everybody moves away in a month, and I get it we're chill, we vibe, maybe my new roommates will be too and we'll have a hangout for next school year on clutch.

But I'm also suspending that worry that the vibe will die with me, as it does, because my awkward, shameful, insecure energy really comes out to play when all these other people aren't around to cover up the vibe. I'm worried b/c I just get those sensory overload days where I can't process a word or even formulate a thought proper and what if I were to invite him over in an insecure impulse to be less lonely and also have one of those awkward, lost sad girl days, and he is just uncomfortable. that's just too much pressure to put on a houseguest.

I get deep and I don't know what to do about it since I'm not used to speaking for my feelings. And I get worried too, that since my deep thoughts haven't been properly vetted in the company of another's perspective that they're just jibber jabber and flimflam that I take too seriously. Mostly likely they are, at least a percentage. And I'm worried of the embarrassing thing being known as a part of me? I don't know what my self-consciousness arises from exactly, except that

///

I just wasted like another hour on facebook and god knows where my mind is now. I keep going down thought trains regarding my own identity and it's looking real codependent up in here. I keep stalking old friends then circling back to my album of photos, which goes way back, and gives a pretty accurate representation of how my own self-perspective toppled over the years, and it just hits different every time. well. I guess it hits the same but the experience of reliving how it went down never gets old. And every time I replay this story I want to hold on before it slips away like I might be able to tie it all back together, except, I can't; this is all in the past, and the present is what I'm letting slip.

And then I did it; I caved and let myself look at my ex again. and I cried a couple tears like I do. Just looking at his picture gives me a whole as involuntary reaction. does that mean this is as real as I feel it is? whatever 'this' is that I'm referring to; there's nothing to reference presently except for my own pathetic mulling. I let myself imagine getting re-acquainted with him, and him just piercing through my layers of buisniness in my mind- the layers that I'm trying to get through now just to do homework and get serious about life. Basically, knowing he's out there, and remembering his presence scares the bullshit out of me, and I want to get back to work.

almost. only almost because it's not real, it's just me, trying to incentivize myself with somebody I can't have, because, I don't know how to pay attention to myself enough to mediate my own emotions enough to be in a real, tangible relationship with a guy like him. A pseudo relationship was what we had, and what I kept it at, because I couldn't handle the real-time accountability for my own lack of mental health.

he was real though, me, he was real. he saw me. and I'm allowed to see myself the way he saw me.

this is a crash down that I'm not fully registering, part of my brain is still hanging out in fantasy land.

other thoughts bring it down too, like looking back on how my life slowly derailed when I began to learn that I was responsible for the emotions my family was manifesting as well as my own, and how that induced trauma I couldn't manage, and how this all derailed me from keeping my own center of authentic pride in tact. I'm a friggin mess.

and how this all is going to relate to me getting back to doing friggin homework is a mess.

I know on some level this is just me avoiding the next step; the homework step, because it's the step of accountability and of action, and that's the step that separates me from this perpetual procrastination- the addiction I have is in the procrastination of the thing, it's a way of self soothing and self harm at the same time. this is how this works and it's a fucking terrible thing.

I suppose when I see procrastination as an addiction in that way, that it's easier to see that me eliminating procrastination isn't the self harm it feels to be but the elimination of self-harm, which feels sort of confusing because it's also the elimination of self-soothing which causes quite a bit of friction internally. And that friction can be enough to keep me propelled forward. What's that physics word about the amount of kinetic energy needed to start motion is greater than the amount needed to keep something in motion?

It's just the friction can come at me from all sides when I need more self-soothing than procrastination can remedy. and then the elimination of procrastination can't help either.

all these fucking arguments just to avoid the action. god I'm good at this, and it's not good.
I suppose my heart isn't quite in it. I kept seducing myself into doing my design homework by trying to fall in love with the work but this time I'm having trouble finding the same passion for it. I'm mostly angry with the multiple moving parts in this project and the way it's hard to keep them all organized enough to make it fun and sexy.

At the end of the day, even when I'm flitting away on facebook, all roads lead to the place where rubber meets the road. When the training wheels come off, that's when life gets real, that's when it gets to the place where you can really feel. I complain about this depression all day but when I truly commit to my own life, to my own inner dialogue, that's when I'll truly meet what I'm dealing with and I can choose to either deal with it really or give up again to what makes life numb.

I hate that this reality feels like such a devastating binary, that it's either do or die, and it's harsh. but I only feel real when I'm accepting this binary.

I know in my heart I have a lot to untangle, that there's still a lot of work left to do before I can begin to see the light of day, or really hold my own in this world. I hope to god I'm capable of maintaining my own needs and focusing on what my emotions are doing. Keeping my attention on my own is
ugh

especially when I don't know what is my own, all this is confusing since I feel like I should want to do this dumbass homework but I really just want to ruminate on my life or feel part of something rather than force myself into solitude and come out with this thing (a diploma) that's supposed to make me a better part of society. fucking pergatory out here.

my mind is weak. I am supposed to be strong.

I don't know why at every turn my mind says I can't do this. It gets overwhelmed with feeling, this feeling of abandonment, and it feels like a deeper pain than I've ever known, although, it's just a numb thing now because it's something that's always there but never felt.
I hate that I have to get so real about my story before I can actually make myself do this work. I'm such an obsessive person.

//

maybe it's not that I'm not motivated enough or that I'm too lazy or that I'm too much a coward to show up and do the thing I agreed to (schoolwork). Because this is the same struggle I've been having for forever, back when I was a kid and I'd cry at the dinner table doing homework because- and I can say this out of the compassion I have for the experience I had then- because I felt abandoned emotionally. My parents didn't understand the enormity of the task I was taking on symbolically by doing a simple sheet of homework every night, and they told me over and over to just do it, but they never sat with me and understood how I felt it made me part of something, and how that thing called school I found intimidating, and how I didn't know how to measure up to the sort of person I might want to be. I was left to my own devices to try and really weave myself into this idea of being a part of a greater fabric of society, which was an overwhelming task. And through my father's stories I'd learn that it was too overwhelming for him to handle too, and he'd make jokes out of things that weren't funny exactly but I'd laugh and be happy to be part of his world. He'd make a joke of himself, and a joke of mom, and things would be funny, but I knew also that it didn't connect, and that I felt alone.

I still feel very alone today, trying to do the work assigned to me, and wondering how it'll ever make me, the actual me, fit in. it just feels like a thing, a trick, at best, I've learned to do and
learning how to weave myself into the greater fabric of society still feels like a real overwhelming task. and I feel deeply alone always, but doing the work to feel less alone makes everything more immediate and I just get very aware of the aloneness.
but now that I'm older; I can make the effort.

I'm learning slowly, and by seeing myself with the same compassion Ethan saw me, I'm seeing how this trauma in me is twisted a deeper part of me and I'm able to let the trauma go when I can see it there.

still, life gets confusing and I need a lot of searching before I can seem to get my priorities straight. I don't know if this clarity will last until tomorrow, or if I'll be able to get myself to start homework again tonight. it's all up in the air.

facing my own 'abandonment' (still feels like a harder hitting word than necessary) is a tall order on any given day of the week. and it takes a lot of energy.

I think I might've gotten somewhere tonight, at least.




Ad: