I smoke among the dead at night. Most people would be shaken at the thought of that mere occurrence but I’m not. When I think of it now, I wonder why that little aspect of things has never really phased me considering I have been out there at the wee hours of the morning. My mind has fears of its own, dead people just isn’t one of them.
Maybe it is the silence that calms me. It sure isn’t the cigarettes I’m taking twice a night and four times a day. Or maybe it could be the darkness of the dead of night that gives me a sense of resemblance. It shows me that the darkness inside couldn’t possibly be that scary, at least not scary enough to stop me from staring at it alone, with the company of the seven gravesites in the backyard of my balcony. How about, it could also be that those dead folks who are buried there can feel my silent screams from the inside every night as I exhale the smoke out of my lungs. I try not to cough, we have a no sound policy out there when it’s just our souls that seem to come alive.
I hope they know of the nights that I wish I was in there with them, buried under the soil to where it is said to be peaceful. The adage, ‘’rest in peace’’ had to have had a mild relevance to the fact that besides your soul, your body and mind too can rest on the ground six feet under where not a beep of the darkness of depression can touch you. I smoke in the midst of the dead. I feel nothing and everything the darkness has to offer. I welcome it with open arms just as I do with every inhale and exhale of the cigarettes that lay print of their smoke in the middle of my fingers.
Disclaimer; This is a very anxiety-ridden post so I hope you can bear with me.
What my anxiety told me today…
My blog update (this very same one that I am writing now) will not make any absolute sense to anyone who will come across it, which begs the question of why am I even trying to write it to begin with. It will probably be a jumbled mess of my thoughts. No one should be subjected to reading my not so coherent thoughts.
Everything I will probably write here on this precise post will make zero sense to anyone. It probably is and will be an exaggeration of my said anxiety and it does not need to be highlighted at all.
I am incapable of writing anything substantially true and intelligent about what it feels like to live life with anxiety. I am never too conscious of it anyway, it probably is just another fabrication of my mind. Get over yourself Mercy, you can’t get any less pathetic than this.
I am an imposter at my own experience in anxiety which technically means that I probably don’t have anxiety at all. Nothing about my life can legitimize that I do actually have anxiety so why don’t I merely stop trying to convince the world that I do have it just so I can cover up being a weak human being.
Nobody likes my blog. Everyone probably thinks of it as quite mediocre and cliché. So what, that you experience a degree of sadness more often than not and that you are an attention seeking bitch which is probably why you cut yourself and have zero concept of selflove. That doesn’t make you anymore depressed than the rest of the world. The world truly doesn’t care much about what you write. They definitely won’t care about the pity party you are having with yourself right now by writing this.
I have no place in this world for me and my anxiety. (p.s I genuinely do believe this.)
My anxiety reared its ugly head out today. Maybe it was due to the fact that it was a lot more at the forefront of my thoughts today than it is on other days. Late last night before bed, my sister and I were having an honest conversation about why it is life feels very hopeless currently, especially for me to be precise. It is through that conversation that I was able to reveal to both myself and her just how immensely anxious I am over what is supposed to be the next phase of my life. The revelation of just how much anxiety I have for this next phase of life was both liberating to know as well as scary as hell. Later after having that conversation, I went to bed with quite a lot on my mind. Now that I knew why it was taking me so long to make any resemblance of progress in life, it left me questioning how exactly am I supposed to get past the crippling anxiety that I have.
Coming into today, I knew that I wanted to write concerning every little thought that was skimming through my mind about what it is like to have anxiety always as a voice second to that of your conscious thoughts. I didn’t know how I was going to be elaborate enough to give a sense of clear understanding and depiction of what it is like to go through the motions with anxiety wrapped around you like a second skin. Just thinking about how I wanted to project my anxiety in words, gave me major anxiety. The anxiety I got earlier just thinking about what I was going to write about was what prompted me to start this blog the way I did. I would begin by depicting exactly what it is like to have anxiety have you second guess every little bit of everything that you do. I was and still very much are conscious of my anxiety now even as I write this. My anxiety has me immensely worried that I’ll come out looking like a fraud or an imposter who’s just full of excuses over why she hasn’t made any kind of progress in her life since finishing school. I tried writing down prompts as a result of my anxiety so I wouldn’t keep repeating myself but now as I am trying to write this using them, I am afraid that they don’t seem to be making much sense to me now. That statement alone is a very big depiction of just how prominent anxiety is for me.
I have alluded in previous blogs just how weird of a child I was. As I have grown over the years, a lot of those weird quacks that I didn’t quite understand why I had them now make a lot of sense because they were merely just anxieties I had. Today, most of them would fall under what most would perceive as just personality traits and I too think that to an extent, they have morphed deeper into my personality than I care to admit. I not too long ago wrote about how bad of a perfectionist I am and maybe I didn’t dig deeper on why is the case but I understand now that it actually has a lot to do with my anxiety. For me, having everything happen in a precise and specific way allows me to gain control of the outcome. At the back of my mind, anxiety is the voice that requires me to feed on that sense of control. I have tried to never find out what the consequences will be if things don’t happen in perfect order but I am probably guessing that the world doesn’t collapse and neither does my life. Anxiety makes you too scared to find out that nothing probably does happen.
In the case of my not so foreseeable future, anxiety has taken away every sense of hope I have that adulting is not some big bad wolf that intends to gobble me up and spit me out like cud. It was a long time coming but for the past couple of months, I have been evading the subject of what’s next for me now that school is done. I have told myself and those around me of just how unprepared I am for working or looking for a job at that. Most people’s responses to my uncertainty of choice are that I would eventually have to start somewhere, regardless of whatever. As long as the rest of the world has gone down the same road into adulting, I don’t have much of a choice in it either. Revisiting this conversation with my sister was able to give me insight and perspective of just how much my anxiety has the reign over this. I probably did not take time to really go into the depths of why I was so resistant to the idea of working and of not feeling qualified enough to work in my field of expertise. Feeling anxious can do that to someone; Blind you from the fact that it is no ordinary fear but in hindsight, it is genuinely crippling anxiety that you’re feeling.
Now that I am aware of just how much anxiety has a hold on me right now, I do not know how to work my way around it. I still very much are terrified of looking for work and starting that work. I feel quite amateurish in the career I chose and I don’t think there is much I can do about that feeling, not when it will probably take me years of more studying in school for me to trust in my expertise. On previous occasions, I have had a little control over my anxiety through smoking and truthfully speaking, I can’t seem to even stand the scent of an unlit cigarette, let alone smoke it. I thought before that if I replaced self-harm with smoking, it would give me a better hold on my anxiety levels but I am aware that it merely turns into a rabbit hole that is never quite easy to get out of. I have been clean for a couple of months now, I think it’s safe to say I am trying to keep it that way.
It is of great importance that I try and get a hold of this crippling anxiety that I have over starting work and getting a job. Right now, all it has achieved is make me absolutely horrified about life and what to expect of it. My ambitions in life have become less because I am convinced that I don’t want to live long enough to keep trifling with anxiety at every step of my life. Anxiety demystifies death for me every other day. I can’t even express this to anyone because it comes off as such a cowardly notion to not want to live over the tiniest bit of change. Anyone would think that dying is too big of a reason or in their minds, too melodramatic of an excuse to do just because I am not ready to take up life by its horns… and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that. Anxiety is a ball of melodramatic fear over consequences that are very much unlikely to happen. I can’t tell you what exactly petrifies me so much about the whole idea of getting a job as a counsellor and having a supervisor but I can assure you, I am convinced in my mind that I am not ready for it and if on the chance that I do start off unprepared, I will be the world’s unhappiest human being which eventually might give me reason enough to jump ship from this thing we call life.
This is really me right now…
This is me on every instance, I check out each box here…
Over the month of August, among the other many books I got to read, I came across a book that I consider myself quite lucky to have found. I believe the book is a memoir, I am certain that it is a memoir, written by an author named Lori Gottlieb. The title of the book is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. When I first came across it, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a book I would fully be invested in. I knew it entailed matters concerning therapy and I was a bit iffy on whether it would be artistically motivating to read. I can say with certainty now that this book is a lot more than I anticipated. I read it gradually, but loved every bit of it, including how expressive the author wrote. I am genuinely glad I got to read it to completion.
Without giving out too much of it, the plot of the book is something that quite captivated me. I learned a lot and it gave me quite the insight. I say this from the perspective of someone who has mildly studied psychology, ( I say mildly because all I have had the chance to study it, is through a diploma and if I am being honest, I still consider myself quite the amateur in regards to it). Before I can delve into my own relation to psychology, I just want to elaborate on how insightful it was reading MaybeYou Should Talk to Someone. Insightful in that, it was able to bring light into the subject of therapy from both a therapist’s opinion and that of a client’s opinion. It sort of normalized seeking professional therapeutic assistance, to those who already had sort it out and equally to those who hadn’t. I found that quite wonderful about the book. Besides just normalizing therapy itself, it too humanized therapists as more than just their professions. The author who is a psychotherapist takes us down the journey of being a therapist as well as seeking one out for herself. I found that quite great because, speaking from a personal opinion, one can be quick to perceive therapists as invincible. It is easily misjudged that therapists, being what their profession entails, are too strong of human beings to go through similar motions as those of their clients. On the off chance that they do experience similar hardships, the perception is that they are equipped to somewhat counsel themselves out of those said hardships. I should clarify that it does not work like that at all. As a psychology student, it is insisted enough that therapists need their own therapists for themselves. It’s entirely a chained link of therapists seeking out therapy from each other. That aspect of the book was quite important for me. I applauded the book mainly for that, besides all the other wonderful aspects of it that were brought out.
Please do… Call your therapist. You know you need to. I’m cheering you on 🤗.
If someone came to me and asked me if I would advise them on seeking out help from a therapist or counsellor, or even a psychiatrist, my outright first answer would be yes. It is entirely important to give time and care to one’s mind as is given to one’s body. It would be instinctual for me to say yes as my first answer, but I owe you the honesty that it will not be technically a walk in the park. This is from a very biased opinion, this is my opinion as a client who’s been to therapy, it is not the opinion of a psychology student. This is also not meant to be a discouragement towards anyone out to seek therapeutic help, not at all. Therapy is great, wonderful even, but it will require a lot of you. Some parts of you will be required, parts that you may not be quite yet aware of.
My first experience of professional therapy was with my school counsellor in college. If I am being truthfully honest, it was long overdue. I want to be very clear that when I refer to professional therapy or counselling, I mean it as therapy from a professionally trained counsellor or psychologist. One who has studied in that field and is not a self-appointed counsellor. Anyone can give advice, not everyone can offer therapy. Just needed to be clear on that. I am strictly talking about a professional psychologist.
It was quite a big step for me to reach out to the school counsellor. I wasn’t the most approachable person, and neither was I the most approaching. At school, I knew well to never be too personal with anyone. Actually, if my memory serves me right, I was incited by my sister to seek out the counsellor because my sister thought of me then as a ticking time bomb. I was convinced that I wanted a baby, ( major eye roll) and I was only twenty years old. Then, it felt like such an urgency for me, like it was the only thing that I was missing, and it would somehow complete my life. I was quite naïve then because even now, I am not remotely ready for a child. Therapy was able to show that to me. I later learned that I was overcompensating for something entirely different. Anyway, my first take on therapy was good. I found solace and empathy that I had never quite experienced before. It was as it should have been, it was therapeutic for me and I was able to go through therapy for the next three years I had in college. It took a bit of a turn for me because the relationship between me and the school counsellor progressed to a very close friendship which in therapy is regarded as a dual relationship. To be able to maintain the levels of professionalism, it is frowned up to have any other sort of relationship outside the client/counsellor relationship. It is perceived that if the boundaries are severed, the therapist will not be able to give enough credibility in her profession hence why it is important that one seeks out a different therapist when boundaries are crossed.
For me, I wouldn’t say she entirely quit being my counsellor, and I didn’t seek therapy elsewhere. She transformed into a guide to whom I sort out counsel and advice. Now she is practically like my best friend who is also my Yoda.
Therapy was able to open me up in ways I probably would never have had the chance to before. It even motivated me into being a better student in psychology. Sometime last year, I was able to go back to the professional context of therapy with an entirely new therapist who was just that, my therapist. I only got to see her for about a month before I stopped. The experience of it was quite different than my first which leads me to my next piece of advice, you don’t have to be stuck in a therapy that you don’t feel is working for you. It is absolutely okay to decide on changing your current therapist and seeking out one who best fits you. I understand for those who have been to therapy that it may sometimes feel like a betrayal to your therapist if one considers leaving, but it is best to remember that it is your wellbeing that comes first. There will be no hard feelings from your therapist.
From the standpoint of being a soon to be counsellor, I have only had so little experience as one. I did my first internship as a counsellor at a hospital and I genuinely disliked every moment of it. I was extremely underqualified and my supervisor thought it best to leave me alone on most occasions to tend to actual clients who needed therapy. I often hope that the clients I got to see were able to seek out a second opinion from a more qualified professional. Over time, I have not had the chance to be a counsellor since I finished my diploma. Let’s just say I have been putting it off for nearly a year now. I have convinced myself that I am not ready and I am not certain when I ever will be. On multiple occasions, I have had some serious self-doubt over whether psychology is even the right course for me. Most of the self-doubt best comes from the fact that I am on most occasions, a better client than I am a psychologist. I am two sides of the same coin. Reading this book sort of gave me a perspective of what it is like to be on both sides of the spectrum. The author delves into her own therapy and how difficult it was at first to not feel like her own therapist wasn’t doing enough for her as she thought she would towards her own clients. I am well aware of how that feels because it was in that exact position that I quit seeing my last therapist. Every day, I go through it in my head whether psychology was the best choice for a career. I knew I wanted to be a psychologist when I was in high school. I knew that I needed to be able to give some form of help to those who were like me then, to kids who had never quite felt like they were ‘’normal’’. I believe that I still want to do that, even despite the self-doubt. I still very much want to help people who struggle with their mental health. All I can do is hope that soon, I will get to offer that help.
To finish this off, I would definitely recommend reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. It is a wonderful, insightful, inspiring, beautiful and enlightening read. Lori Gottlieb is a wonderful author from whom I would love to learn more from, especially as a psychotherapist. Be sure to check it out. One can access it on the e-reader called Z library.
It is important for one to be aware of what a good therapist should be like.
Some quotes I picked up from the book that I absolutely loved…
“ we have to let go of the fantasy of creating a better past.”
” When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. ”
Do you ever have truths about yourself that aren’t exactly known to others but are quite obvious to you? Well, if you do, I do too… Some are always there, like some permanent life fixture that doesn’t change. Others, are new every other time. Without further embarking on the specifics of what type of truths I’m talking about, allow me to share a few of which have been skimming through my thoughts for the past while.
Oh, and by the way, now I will refer to them as Naked truths …hopefully, it will make sense along the way why I refer to them as so.
Naked truth no.1
I don’t think I have friends anymore. Be rest assured that I am not saying this in some search for a sense of pity or sympathy. It is partially my doing that I am not acquainted with others besides my immediate family. I must confess that I am not the most tolerant of people especially if there is not much to tolerate about them. Pardon me for sounding like a bitch; it is not entirely to mean that I am surrounded by intolerable people, I just don’t do well in the area of creating and maintaining relations with others. This is especially when I most often don’t feel like people genuinely do want to maintain long-lasting friendships with me that carry some form of bond. I have had friends here and there, a few acquaintances, but none who have stuck around long enough. It has always been seasonal relations that are a matter of circumstance which is fine, not everything is technically meant to last. All I am truthfully saying is that I have a lot of temporary friendships and they always never feel solid, if I may use this term lightly. So yeah, that is one of the recent naked truths that recently dawned on me. I wouldn’t say that I am exactly disturbed by that truth. On most days, I am comfortable with the little cluster of people I get to interact with every once in a while. I also, as I admitted earlier, feel like a partial reason for this fact is because I don’t make much effort in being a friend to others. I admittedly tend to be caught up in my own mind and nonfunctional life that I easily get exhausted having to mingle with others outside the walls of my life and mind.
Disclaimer: If anyone who happens to read this first paragraph gets offended by it over the meagre chance that they actually do consider themselves my friend, I am immensely sorry and maybe we can catch up sometime when either of us is somewhat ready to communicate. Cheers mate.
Naked truth no.2
I am a wimp at trying out this thing called living. Like my history may show, I am more of a survivor/ exister more than I am a live’r. Death is often painted in my thoughts as some form of escape from having to go through the day to day agonies of life. Before this turns out sounding a lot like some version of suicidal ideation [probably slightly is], let me elaborate.
Do I want to die sometimes? Yes. Do I always want to die? No. Is the idea of death as an escape romanticized in my head a little too often cause I am a wimp at life? Absolutely.
When it’s hard to conceptualize that life isn’t meant to be easy on most days, I struggle with myself over why I have to live through it. I find difficulty within myself over the fact that instead of simply ceasing to exist, what is expected of me is that I am supposed to trudge through the hardship, tumbledown, pick myself up and move through it with showing just enough weakness, but not too much. In those moments when life has dealt me a hard one, it is usually a strain for my mind to not want to jump ship. It is like my mind, loses all ability to conjure a better way out which is very cowardly of me now as I listen to myself say it out loud. I never said my mind was strong. With my history of things, it is quite obvious that mental strength isn’t exactly a stronghold of mine. I allude to this to why I think I might not be the one to live till fifty, perseverance sure doesn’t sound like a stronghold of mine but who’s to say how strong I will be in the future. With the uncertainty of things, I may as well surprise myself. I may probably survive all this while still believing that I was never quite cut out for it. So for now, I choose not to be too worried about it, at least in the hope that I’ll keep on surviving long enough to live somewhere in my life.
Naked truth no.3
I have mentioned before in previous writings that I have occasionally been a smoker. Quite recently actually, I would admit that I went beyond the limits and became a light smoker. When I started smoking, it turned into quite an enigma for me. It was something I picked late last year and might I say, I arguably don’t really regret it. It didn’t necessarily serve the intended purpose that I had initially thought it would, but it worked for me somehow. I will never forget the first night that I had my first real cigarette. For starters, I considered having my first cigarette mainly because I thought I would look cool, being a female and smoking. You would understand what I mean if I could paint a better picture for you outside of my mind. It was a cheesy reason, I know…no need to roll your eyes too hard. I had thought of it for a while but never did I quite get around to trying it. Finally, when I did get around to doing it, I was alone in my sister’s apartment and I felt like there was never a better time than the present. I might have convinced myself that I needed to unwind and calm down a little, from what exactly, I don’t remember. It was quite the experience and truth be told, I did feel quite calm afterwards. I could have imagined it, or it may actually have worked. I remember smoking that first night in the house on the couch while directly facing the mirror in the living room. I was so enthralled by seeing myself pull out smoke from the cigarette and then slowly hold it in for a second or two before releasing it to the air. Over the next few weeks, I smoked at least two cigarettes a night. It was in those moments when I felt invincible to a degree. Like nothing much could hurt me, as long as I could smoke it away into the night. It was a mild sense of power that I had never quite felt. I liked it. On the downside, I began to smell like cigarette smoke and my lips were turning a shade too dark for my liking. Then over time, I stopped it for a while, picked up the habit again later and now I stopped again. Now, like four days ago, I bought myself one cigarette thinking that maybe my intolerance for it had sort of reduced …I was incredibly wrong, the moment I lit up and took a go at it, I was beyond nauseated, I could hardly stand it. I am still working out what theories could explain to me now over why I can’t in the least stand the smell of a lit cigarette. Maybe, I just don’t consider it so cool anymore.
For now, those are just but a few naked truths of myself. I can assure you, I’ll be revealing more in time. Maybe it could become a segment of mine. We will just have to wait and see, now won’t we.
About three or so months ago, I started reading books on an e-reader on my phone, not that I wasn’t already a reader before but the app on which I previously used to read on crushed and hasn’t been back up since. So upon discovery of this new site, I was able to start reading a lot more and quite vastly than I did before. I was ecstatic, to say the least. Reading is such an essential part of me, just as it is with writing. After I got the hang of reading again, I decided that to be able to maintain a steady wave of my reading, I’d put out a list of books that I would have to complete at the end of every month, regardless of whether I got distracted or not. Being the way I am, this was perfect for me since I tend to easily sometimes take my sweet time while reading which slows down my pace on how many books I get to read. Anyway, I had been scheduling my reads for the past two months which has even allowed me to put in more reads over the month than I had intended.
Since I started on my monthly schedule of reading, I have read some really wonderful and inspiring books that made me wish I was in a book club of sorts that would allow me to delve into other people’s reviews of the books. Some books made me cry, others struck a chord and some others made me see a few things in a new light. I relish getting to the end of a good book because it just boosts my yearning for reading more of similar good/great books. Since for now, I still don’t have a book club, I thought that maybe instead of just moving on from one book to the other, I’d express through writing what certain books make me feel or how I related to a degree with the said book. It wouldn’t be a full review but just my take on what the books I read leave me with. Like an interaction between the book and me. Just to put it out there, my favourite genre of books always have a touch of mental health in them. For those who may not be aware, a lot of my life has revolved and still revolves around mental health so I quite regard it as very personal and integral to me. Reading more on it through either fiction or memoirs from authors has always given me a sense of connection and solace that my struggles with mental issues isn’t foreign. It has been a support system that is quite unmatched for me for which I am grateful. Therefore, going forward, I hope to be able to share here more of what I read and how it inspired my thoughts, my emotions and my ideas too.
Title of the book; All this time by Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott
I read this book over the month of September and it was a great read. I definitely would recommend this book, most especially to the readers who were great fans of the author’s similar books, Five Feet Apart and The Lucky List. Also for readers who enjoyed the books, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Fault In Our Stars. I am hoping that whatever information I give on this book does not act as a spoiler for those who may seek an interest in reading this book. I actually don’t recall exactly how I came across it because I am constantly on the search for books, most especially on Pinterest since I am able to level down to specifics of the types of books I am usually in search of. For this book, it was at first a slightly slow read but not slow enough that you wouldn’t want to complete it. I was hoping for it not to be a tragic read because books that have an endless array of tragedy, I never quite finish. My anxiety always tends to have me lean on books that aren’t too tragic or those that seem to never have happy ends. But for this book, it proved to be quite worth the finish. It has a twist about it that at the beginning, a reader won’t quite detect. Overall, as the book nears its end, it will captivate you and intrigue you. It will hold your mind and bits of your heart captive. It won’t be a read you’ll be able to put down for another day, you will want to see it till the end and you’ll later be thankful that you did.
Without giving too much out about the book, it got me thinking of the fantasies that I as Dawn had as a child. I cannot entirely rule out whether some of those fantasies aren’t still there. I feel as though sometimes, as human beings, our instincts or hopes held out, allow for certain fantasies we might have had as children growing up to continue being part of us. For example, despite my not so great dating history, I still hold out hope that my fantasy of my ultimate perfect guy will still come to flourish. The odds aren’t on my side in regards to the outcome of this happening but it doesn’t change that I still secretly fantasize that it will. It especially is quite bleak right now because I don’t have the best outlook on dating or even marriage. If you asked me, I am 99% positive that I will never get married, it seems to turn out to be more of a trap for either gender involved. No offence to those who are married and are flourishing, good for you. As for myself, I am not sold on it. I for one don’t entirely believe that there is someone out there who will deem worthy to spend the rest of my life with. I know how that probably sounds, extremely self-centred and a bit, okay maybe a lot obnoxious but I mean it. It is hard for me to believe that someone out there will be the yin to my yang. That we will somehow be in sync with each other despite our differences and odds. But what do I know, most of you would say… I am 23 years old anyway, what experience do I have? I admit, my opinion stands the chance to change over time but it also might not. I believe that one does not start to learn when it is believed they are of “prime age”. What is this standard prime age where one’s opinion stands a chance of being valid and expressable? There is no such standard prime age, or at least I don’t believe there is…
Another such fantasy I have is that maybe, even despite the odds of it ever possibly happening, I will amass as much wealth as is equivalent to that of Kylie Jenner. I know, even when I say it out loud, it sounds ridiculous and such a cliché. Quite embarrassing even… Allow me to explain why this is even a fantasy to start with. For one, I actually take to the high regard that Kylie and I are exactly one year apart in age. She and I share a birthday and she is exactly a year older than I am. For most people, that shouldn’t even matter. For instance, I have a friend from college who shares his birthday with Queen Beyonce but I haven’t heard him trying to amass a similar form of stardom or wealth therefore who am I to want to match King Kylie. It is an absurd fantasy but again, it is my fantasy. The odds are greatly stacked against me, I am aware. I guess some fantasies are meant to come true while some are better yet left as just fantasies.
p.s I hope that anyone who gets to read this has the chance to check out the book All This Time by Mikkie Daughtry.
If I can, I will put a link at the bottom that will hopefully allow a reader to access the book from the site e-reader called Z library which is where I get my books from. https://book4you.org/book/9039712/2a2789
“Tell me, what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? “Mary Oliver
Well Mary, I can’t say there’s much I’ve already done with my one wild and precious life for I’m just twenty three as of a month ago. But let’s say it ‘s all the life I’ll ever get to live. Let’s picture this as the only life I’ve lived and that be enough. We may as well not plan for a future that’s yet to be lived, am I right? So for my puny little life, I will have quite the childhood. I’ll try to find the words to sum it all up but I’ll always come up short. It will be a mesh of a little bit of everything; it will not have been the best years of my life but it will be the years I’ll wish to have held onto more. It will be the years I should never have taken for granted, but still somewhat did. As a kid, I’ll be my best version of prime & proper, at least to the world I’ll try to be. Back at my house, I’ll be the biggest pain in the ass and my arch nemesis will be none other than my dear ole mum, God bless her soul… She’ll take the blunt end of my onset of puberty and will match my energy of being a serious pain in the ass. But despite it all, I’ll adore her existence like that of a god. She’ll be to me like every mother is to their child, their first god and their lifeline. I will not realize just how much the world is unfair to you until the day my lifeline will be taken away from me. Simply, I will learn of one of life’s toughest experiences which will alter the entire basis and trajectory of my life.
Like it is for most people, those lucky enough to have the blessing of family, I’ll live for my family. With one sibling and a single father, I’ll pour out every bit of love in me to them, which now that I think about it, might explain why it will be hard to love anyone else with the intensity and magnitude that some will seek from me. I will adore my family and be in their embrace through every day spent of my puny but precious little life. My dad will be that friend you can’t quite get enough of but still gets annoying every so often. He’ll have my back always and I’ll grow to protect him to the best of my little ability. As for my sister, she will be my best friend, my companion, my roommate and my all rounded life partner. We won’t have much of separate lives since we will be often together too much of the time. She will be my provider for quite the while and I’ll ride it out till what I hope will be the start of my own adulthood. She’ll complain I eat a lot but continue to feed me regardless. What can I say Mary, a girl’s gotta eat to grow. Sometimes indulging into her cravings a little bit more than she should. All my life’s significance, regardless of whether puny or not, my sister will be there for them. She’ll cheer me on and help me brush of the dust from the times I’ll have fall off my feet. She’ll vicariously live through me in my relationship escapades for they will be quite a few… Mary, you may be quite surprised by just how much I’ve experienced in the realm of “love”…I will trust no one more than I trust her and I’m uncertain I’ll ever know what it’s like to have anyone closer to me than her.
I will go through highschool and regard it as the worst years of my life. I’ll hate every day of those agony ridden days. I’ll want to escape to my dreams every day of my life for those four years and I’ll have my heart broken by the impossibility of my dreams ever coming true. I will peg on God to pay His dues to me even despite knowing deep down, He owed me nothing. I’ll walk down the streets of my school every evening looking up at the stars and hoping against everything that the brightest star of all will mean my redemption from my misery. It will surprise me that despite feeling incapable of feeling anything else besides sorrow, I’ll grow to love a girl immensely in the midst of it all. I’ll use her as a distraction from my grief but then, my emotions towards her will envelope me like a dome. She will eventually become all I’ll ever think of in those years and even a few years after that. I will feel hate and this wildly twisted obsession over her that will force me to think again over what I thought I knew about my sexuality. She’ll become the true bane to my existence and I will not know till date whether it was all just a projection of my grief or I just had the worst case of adolescence. Even later in life, I will still regard this girl as quite the enigma. I will have gotten better reins of my emotions when it comes to her but traces of her will still linger and hover over my conscience. I will complete highschool with the passion to charge the world. I will have my dreams hanging from my shoulders and what will then be a well sort out plan to kick start the dreams into motion. I will then learn that it’s a lot harder than I might have thought. My passions and my sorrow will set sail my career into psychology.
I will go through college and have quite the silent rollercoaster. Silent because not a lot of people can attest to anything major happening in my life but it being a rollercoaster because I certainly will have my fair share of things happen in those years. I will loose my virginity in college, and it won’t be memorable. It will not mean much and neither will it be some instrumental rite of passage for me. It will happen and I won’t care to much over it… that’s all that will be to it. I will have boyfriends, and a man-child friend too. My first relationship will be, for lack of a better word, meh. Though at the beginning, I wouldn’t have considered it so, for I will have wanted more from it. It will be based on sex marathons and on and off breaks. In time, it will be the trigger to a very uneventful onset of my first depression. It will kick-start a tirade of emotions, downhill turmoils and a whole lot of anxiety. It’s in college where my battles with mental health will become the fore front of my life. Depression will become my shadow and I will loose recognition of myself without it…Before I can even delve further into what my life will become in regards to my mental health, let me tell you about the man friend I will be crazy enough to date… It will also be in my early twenties, when I’ll have my interest picked on matters BDSM. In the case you’re not aware Mary, this is a kink in sex for those who are unconventionally woke. It will be in my venture of this kink that will lead me to meeting and somewhat dating a man-child who will then be 44 at the time. I know what you’re probably thinking but trust me, at the time it won’t seem as absurd as it might now. He will at the beginning feel like a breath of fresh air (no pun intended in regards to him being old and all..) and I will be enthralled by him and his take on the world. His bluntness will at the start look like something to be admired but it will soon wither in my eyes for it will not go unnoticed to me how emotionally dry he will be. As he himself will say, “I’ve got the emotional depth of a pin cushion”. I consider myself lucky for I will actually know what a pin cushion is like. After that, we will end things between me and this man but we will keep in touch and that will be a mistake I will soon learn dearly from.
I will go through life one day at a time…I will experience a mental agony that nothing will have ever prepared for me. I will learn to cope with this said agony in ways that will leave permanent scars, both on my skin and on my mind. I will still continue to dream and be a little girl on the inside. I will go through life plagued with anxiety that I’m never doing enough, that I’m not the best at anything that I do. I will still keep trying regardless, even when I will want to choose death over life. As I said earlier Mary, my life is still puny and hasn’t matured as much so there’s only so little I can tell you of how my life turns out… I will try my best to write more of how my life goes, maybe when I’m thirty, I will write this again. I will to you how my puny but precious wild life will have gone down. Hopefully, it won’t be so puny anymore.
“Inspired from the book ” It’s okay to laugh ,crying is cool too” I haven’t even completed it yet but I’m sure it’ll be a wonderful read.
” Life is an infinite loop of uncontrollable events ..from the book Note to Self by Connor Franta”
I can’t control the weather… and in the same likeness, I have no imminent control over my fears & anxiety. The world around me could perceive that I do and maybe to a degree, they aren’t entirely wrong but when in that head space, the there & now of my fears, I’m paralyzed completely by my inability to see past what brings me absolute terror. From what I know, my fears didn’t just up and sprout out of the blues. They weaved about in me like a small seedling, deeply rooted from the scars left about by experiences which again, I had absolutely no reign over. I cannot control my infinite fear of loss, that’s there to stay. I’ll never get out of the fear of having my heart try survive it’s existence without my family alive… For my anxieties, I’m like a map with no compass. I don’t feel like I’m aware on where to start. I am a bundle of buzzing nerves with no on and off switch. I can’t absolutely shake the anxiety that it is to just be alive, to merely exist as myself and live through trying to fulfill every ounce of pressure placed on my measly weak shoulders.
I have no absolute control over time, for it is more than just the continued spectrum of occurrences, it is more than the minute or the hour or the day. I could decide on what to do in the next two minutes but consequentially, I hold little power on the likelihood of my decision going through or not happening at all. Control is ever so little, especially since it was never much yours from the very start. I have no control over my unfulfilled dreams or goals, especially those yet to be achieved. They may weigh the most heavy on me but there’s little to nothing I can do about them. Like my sister knowingly teased me earlier by saying to me that, “there’s no degree for you at the supermarket, right next to the isle of Krackles waiting on you to come pick it up, you’re gonna have to wait to study for it to get it.” (krackles are my favorite chips.) It is a helpless feeling having no immediate control over an aspiring future, a future that isn’t promised but just desired. I am not one for the virtue of patience which quite frankly irritates me every so often that things and life can’t be sped up, at any cost. I’m not a live in the moment kind of girl, even when I know, there’s no better time than the present. Today like many of other days in the past, I was hit with the intensity of just how little control over the uncertainty of the future I can change or alter.
I have no control… No control of the haunted memories of the past. Of the little girl who’s soul and being felt always forlorn. Of my memories of her as she envisioned what her journey to school was hopefully gonna be but didn’t quite turn out as she might have hoped. That the rise of a new dawn would in hope bring in her the warmth from the sun into her measly heart. To the memories of a sadness that couldn’t quite be shaken down by the simple joy of being a child. Even then, there wasn’t much control this little girl had, it never was in her hands, and despite the lapse of time, she’s still shaky on that control even now that’s she’s me and somewhat grown up. I have no control of how life went down for that little girl. To the years closed in on herself, to the loss of her protector, to the loss of her identity or even to the last meal she had last night for dinner. No control at all.
When I think I’ve ran out of things I have no control over, I realise that it’s quite the opposite actually… I cannot seem to go through each and every thing that’s actually beyond my control…
For now, I conclude with the fact that I don’t have control of what others may perceive of me. I doubt quite a lot whether anyone truly has control of this specific aspect of things. I’ve battled with this all my life, especially since my nature has had me be a people please (if I could call myself that). I admit, it’s not the best perk especially since it goes hand in hand with my immense fear of being in anyone’s bad books. Truthfully, even i realize how hard it is to juggle those two character traits about myself especially with the knowledge that’s there’s little to zero control I have over how they are retaliated by others. We all know this, we are all aware of how little power we have over what people think about us even when all we can do is wish and hope that it’s all good things. I’ve shoved down emotions and feelings just so they won’t have to ‘rock the boat’ with anyone. I’ve grown to resent those I love and somewhat care for just cause they have consistently pushed a button of mine that I’ve not gotten around to confronting them about. It’s genuinely the worst trait about me. I’m a big pushover and I wish I could say I knew how to change that but I don’t. But regardless of it all, I still wouldn’t have control over anyone’s thought in relation to me. I can’t bend anyone to feel a certain way about me, even if I wanted and you know what, that’s okay. It’s absolutely okay that I don’t have that kind of power because it shouldn’t bother me at all (even if it does a little) but it shouldn’t… It’s part of free will. Therefore, it’s okay that others may beg to differ on what they can or can’t control but for me, it often feels a lot like there’s only so little that’s actually in my hands. Who knows, maybe along the line, I’ll work on learning more of those things that actually are in my control.
You ever have those aspects of yourself that you’re not entirely sure are a good thing? Well I do, at least. Lots of them actually. I’ve got this specific one that I wouldn’t consider the most obvious or detectable to those who know me but don’t get to spend enough time around me to be able to pick up the said trait. For someone closer, in this case my sister who’s also my roommate has grown accustomed to it and isn’t quite fond of it. In regards to it, it makes me the Debbie Downer sister, the most up tight, the less spontaneous, oh, and the worrier too… I wouldn’t really say that I hate this specific aspect of myself fully, it grounds me to an extent and anyways, I’m only regarding it now as a flaw on the occasional times when I wish it didn’t restrain me as immensely as it does… Okay okay, enough of the beating around the bush nonsense and I’ll get right to just saying exactly what it is this said aspect of myself is. I believe that in lay man’s language, what I’ve got going on is the character aspect of a perfectionist. I’m not 100% sure whether in most cases, one’s actions that may fall under the bracket of a perfectionist are excusable entirely and whether it eliminates one from some form of fault. This isn’t to mean that wrong actions are meant to be absolved just cause one couldn’t help their perfectionist nature… and now I’m getting derailed from what I initially meant to write in regard to this insistent need of mine to do everything by the book…back to focus.
Take for example, my last statement right there. It’s absolutely okay that I write whatever comes to mind and not feel like it’s some crime I’ve committed that requires some form of punishment from god knows who or what. I’ve said it to myself before that I wish I could make my writing absolutely spontaneous but despite trying to keep up with that notion, minutes before I was able to write all this down here, I couldn’t help myself but scribble down a few highlights on this exact topic in the fear that I’d screw it up if I left it to the fate of my mind to remember exactly what my line of thought was at the very beginning. Pardon me if I hardly sound like I’m making any sense. Technically, my incessant need to have everything in some prime and proper version of things does piss on my parade a lot more than I’d like to admit.
Do you know what’s most absurd about it to me in regard to this, it’s the crazy notion in my mind that’s convinced of some form of reprimand in the case that things aren’t done in the ‘rightful’ manner. My conscious mind believes that whatever action that’s to be undertaken, if slightly bent from its set out route of focus, there will be life changing repercussion…Maybe in some cases, there might stand the chance of the odds being in favour of things needing to be done exactly as they are supposed to be done but on the off chance that the world won’t end if I don’t do things all perfect, it makes it direly impossible to have spontaneity ever happen to me. I cannot begin to elaborate just how much of this aspect of myself is fully embedded in me. It’s in everything little thing I can think of that I do. From the way I talk, to the way I carry myself around in front of people, to the way I arrange my things in my wardrobe, to the way I write… It goes on and on. It’s even trickled down to a hobby that’s absolutely supposed to relax me and completely take the edge off which is what has led me to being here and writing it down. Colouring. Yes, you read that right. I recently started colouring and had been yearning to do it for a while now because I thought to myself, why not, seems like it would be quite fun and it would bring the carefree child in me out a little bit more, to reminisce on easier times in life through bringing colour to portraits & pictures. But guess what, even that had to get trampled over by my need to do things right… I was just colouring a while ago and I couldn’t help but feel upset that I wasn’t colouring one of the pictures in my colouring book exactly as the object usually is in reality. When I first started, I’d insist on checking exactly what colours a certain picture was so that I’d colour exactly in the same manner. Rather than embracing the spontaneity of creating my own art in colour, I was anxious that by some random chance, someone would pick up my colouring book and question me for not colouring respectively as it should be. The whole point of me colouring was never to seek out perfection but despite that, I can’t seem to shake off the idea that everything needs to fall exactly into its right place or in this case, its right colour.
Like I said, to some extent, I’ve grown accustomed to it because without a doubt, I’ve never been one to live on the edge of life. I’ve always played things safe, never to purposely or intentionally rock the boat. Being a perfectionist has helped somewhat calm my raging anxiety over things beyond my control though it is also technically built on the very said anxiety. I truly believe that if I was less of an anxious person, I’d be more relaxed, maybe Zen even. Maybe then, I’d care less about the fear of an absurd repercussion than trying to have everything fall into its proper place. I’m sadly a real major stickler for order and despite how much I’d wish to change that, I think it’s best to admit that it will take a whole lot to rid me of what can be now termed second nature to me. Gotta admit though, I wish my mind, soul and body would just go with the flow you know… Sore away with the wind, wherever it may take me without the fear of a possible anxiety attack. What can I say, it’d be nice to have my own nature try not wring the breath out of my neck in the face of a little imperfection.
P. s This here is a picture of my current remotely acceptable coloured picture, not sure whether it’s a smurf or a gnome but I wanna hope that it’s colours match those acceptable to the gods of perfectionism. 😌
..another P.S …So apparently, from Pinterest quotes, it’s not at all a good thing to be a perfectionist. It’s very flawed seemingly. I’m not here to justify it’s good or bad aspects, maybe just to reflect on its disadvantage a little, at least when it’s not being life threatening.
It is absolutely okay that the current and present feel in my heart right now is freedom. Freedom of letting go what I couldn’t salvage or save. Freedom from the bond that was genuinely holding me down and caging me in.
It is okay that I chose myself other than the other person. It is okay that I feel conflicted over whether it truly is okay that I made the choice to walk away for the reasons that I chose.
I may have wondered whether it was the right thing to do but I can’t refute how good it is to be by myself. I was scared to feel lonely but now I know that being lonely isn’t what’s meant to kill me.
It’s absolutely okay that I have no immediate plans for my future. It is okay that I feel conflicted over not having the said plans. I’ve had immense amounts of pressure weigh in on my shoulders over getting a head start on my journey after school and it’s all but made me want to loose my mind further down than I already have.
It’s been hard having to justify to everyone, and most especially to myself that I don’t feel ready to just up and start on to the next thing that is meant to kick start ‘adulthood’ for me.
The goal on everyone’s mind is to have me fall in line just as is expected of me to now look for a job or start on a career I in the least feel qualified enough to embark on. I know it may take a while to believe in my decision and feel ‘unwavered’ over making it but it is absolutely okay that I’m indecisive over the next course of my life.
It isn’t a fault not to have my shit together and that maybe, what I really need to care about isn’t how to convince others of my choices but find contentment in the fact that they are my decisions and it’s okay that they don’t and won’t always please everyone.
It is absolutely okay that I feel lost in my passions. The feeling of not having enough to turn my writing into a best seller with just a wave of a wand. It is okay that I feel under-qualified in my craft and that I know it will take a lot more of me building my self believe than learning how to write more artistically pleasing.
It is okay that I hope to put my writing out there, for the world to read and find solace, joy and beauty in my work. I aspire to write and never grow tired of finding more words to describe the world and my thoughts on everything. It is okay that all my plans feel very slow progressed.
They might not be taking place at the said speed of lightning but they will happen in due time. It is okay that I’ll sometimes feel like they are but just a dream, a dream I still very much peg my trust in.
Therefore, it is with absolute certainty that it’s okay that I’ve still got a lot to learn, a lot to experience, a lot more to write… and as long as I can and will write, then it is okay that it doesn’t have to all happen now.
Despite the uncertainty of things, it is absolutely okay that I’m still learning about my mental health.
I may not always be the best judge when it comes to deciphering whether everything I feel is bound to the black hole of depression but it’s okay that I’m still trying to figure it out.
I know I’m not always right and I stand the chance to be more wrong most times than I will be right but despite it, I’m okay with learning through the act of sometimes being scared and over reading into things.
My journey through struggle has shed enough light that fear will cripple me a lot when it comes to understanding my mental health. It’s okay that I don’t know what always to feel when things get hard for me mentally.
…and finally, it is absolutely OK that my writing won’t always make sense… That I won’t always feel my best about what I write or how I write. It is okay that my styles of writing differ from those whose writing I admire the most.
In time, I trust that I’ll see the beauty in the formation of my words and in the style I chose to let them flow. It is okay that I’m often unimpressed by my own writing and also occasionally pat myself in the back for even being able to put two words together that make some form of sense.
It is okay to feel doubt in myself in regard to my craft, it gives room for me to push myself further at trying to better myself. It’s okay that there’s always room for growth…and it’s absolutely okay that I wrap this up here and retire to sleep.
Not too long ago, on this very platform, I did something very unlike myself. I let out emotion and vulnerability in what I believed was love. Now, a lot of things just took a turn and I’m not here to take back what I said but I am here to unarmour myself again and to somewhat cry for lost love, unrequited love and a tinge of heartbreak.
It seems as though I may have bitten a bit more than I could chew earlier when I got into the current relationship if I may at all call it that anymore. When I first spoke of it, I was certain that it would be different, it would have me wishing for nothing more. I wrote of how I was trying to navigate the whole idea that love didn’t equate to time as I had perceived it for quite a while. Now when I think about it, I just might have to stick to the ideology that it does, at least for the sake of myself and to possibly avoid anymore misleading emotion. Can’t really say that the current downfall of my relationship right now is sourly the fault of my perception that maybe love could happen in a matter of a couple conversations and what felt like one’s show of their heart. It wasn’t an absolute misjudgement of my part, sad to say, life happened too. It was SHIT, it still is. I never thought that apart from situations in the like of long distance relationships or toxic partners, I’d ever feel out of emotion for a person due to issues not exactly their fault. I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t quite reveal my reasons for just yearning to end this so called relationship because it genuinely would paint a poor picture of myself. I’ve gone back and forth with myself on whether my reasoning is anyway valid to ending this and I believe in the midst of it all, I stopped feeling so strongly for him and now all that’s left is some form of dull care. The kind of care that in time fizzles out.
You might be wondering why I’ve not ended it yet. I question myself over it too. I realized that I had banked so much hope for this working out, now it just feels like a failure I don’t know how to let go of. A dead heart that I’m still trying to resuscitate. It leaves a bad taste in my tongue just having to admit that even despite thinking it was God sent, it still didn’t work out. Maybe that’s where I went wrong, I misplaced God’s unanswered prayers for one that was entirely my doing. So here I am, trying to work out how to let go of an already sank ship. In the time I’ve had to ponder over how to let go, I came to terms with the fact that I’ve grown scared. I’d secretly held out hope that it was finally no longer going to be lonely for me anymore, that I’d not have to go through life as a lone sailor. I was undoubtedly overjoyed when we started, I knew he’d slay through the thicket and climb over my walls, past the monsters both in and out of my head and through the tight locked door where I stood, ready to quit being alone. It sounds selfish, that the only thing keeping us from absolute disintegration is my fear of being alone. He undoubtedly deserves better than that. I believe in leaving things on a clean slate, I’ve never been one to carry a grudge, at least when it comes to boyfriends turn exs. My poor soul can’t stand to have someone mad at me, it’s a terrible perk. I’m aware that I’m gonna have to sever the ties, regardless of my fears. It’s all I can do to hope I will find contentment within myself and being by myself.
So yeah, with finality in my heart and my mind made up, I know I need to end this. Our so called love was virtual, it spoke and felt volumes of what we wished we would have been. Promises were made, deep words were thrown around in hope that we’d be together in an unbreakable bond. It’s also been terrifying to think of going back on my promises, promises that shouldn’t have been made at all now that I’m no longer under the haze of clouded infatuation. Truthfully a lesson to be learned not to throw around words like ‘need you‘ and ‘can’t survive without…’ around all willy nilly because as of weeks ago, neither of us could keep to our promises of need or survival for each other. The distance between us hasn’t entirely severed my affection for us, for the the short time we got to share whatever we did. I likely still hope, even against my better judgement that maybe just maybe if I’d have the soul to wait, we’d still work something out. But I need to make this final first before I can jump into anything else. It’s all I can do, to hope that it makes sense to him why I am doing this. I can’t speak for where his mind or heart lies in all this but I can hope that it at least makes a tiny bit of sense as to why this is our possible best shot. I will miss what we could have had. I’ll hurt, that’s for sure.
