i want to be brave

i feel like my life has turned into little pockets of time.

last week was such a big blur. emotional upheaval. traumatic roller-coaster. inevitably tragic. every single aspect of my life was in limbo. i felt lost and weak and pointless and so very, very tired of trying to hold it all together. i just wanted to escape. literally, figuratively, it didn't really matter to me one way or the other, as long as i was no longer me, living my life in my body.

i obviously don't deal well with...anything really. i have some theories on this.

when i was in the 10th grade, i went through what i guess was my first bout of the crazies. not really. a lot of big changes were happening in my life, and i wanted none of it. i felt like parts of my life were falling apart, no matter what i did to prevent it. so i tried to do stupid things to forget what was happening. stupid, teenage crap. my teachers and dorm advisors eventually intervened, got in touch with school counselors, who got in touch with my parents, who got in touch with professional counselors. and i got help. i remember my first session with my therapist. he left me waiting in his office for him for like, fifteen minutes, and as i was looking around, i noticed he had this huge wall of toys. now, i was 14 at the time, so toys weren't really supposed to interest me, but i figured since he left me in there to fend for myself i could do one of two things: bawl my eyes out as I'd been doing for the passed six months, or go over and investigate the toys. i ended up making a farm. i had the barn, barnyard, animals, and white picket fence. when my therapist came back in, he wanted to talk about what i'd created. he asked me where all the people were and i told him there were none (obviously). he asked why. i think i replied, very calmly and seriously, and with all the wisdom of a teenager, "because people just mess everything up."

that was when we began working on my issues of stability and control. up until that point, my life had always been relatively stable. my parents got divorced, but they still remained really close friends and we all did things as a family so that my sisters and i wouldn't feel the loss of the separation as much. my mom was engaged to a great guy who i loved. my grandparents were like second parents to me. my sisters were my best friends and were never too far away, despite the fact that i didn't live at home (my older sister actually lived in my dorm with me). i had great friends at boarding school, good grades. a relatively stable life.

then my mother's fiance was in an accident and life...stopped being life. a lot of other things happened around the same time (viscious fights with friends who were spreading sick rumors about me, my older sister leaving me for the first time to go off to college, my mother moving out of her house because she could no longer afford the rent, etc.), but that was the biggy.

my life changed. and i railed against it as hard as i could, with as much force as i had. but it changed anyway.

i slept all the time. i cried when i wasn't asleep. i spent my 15th birthday in the ICU watching a man in a coma and the life support that was keeping him alive. i tried to take control of my life in really, really unhealthy ways. and it just made everything worse.

so my therapist and i worked on getting me comfortable with change.

ever since then, i haven't had a problem with stability. it's almost the exact opposite, actually. i've become restless. i need things to change after a while or i feel suffocated. i'm not hard to satisfy externally, but i rarely satisfy myself. i want more. all the time, i want more and i want difference. i need to change. i can't be me all the time.

i feel like i'm always waiting for something better, always looking for something new. what i have is perfect...for a span of time. and then i remember all the things i want to do that i haven't done. and i'll need more.

not moving forward scares me. there are so many things i want to do that i'm afraid i'll never do if i stay the same person in the same place.

and at this point, i feel like i'm too scared to go out and get what it is i want. even if i knew what it was i wanted. and so i'm dealing with that fear. with not being brave.

i want to be brave.

and then there's the control. i feel like, because that time in my life was in such upheaval, and i had no control over it, i crave the control now. because the last thing i'll ever let happen is for me go back there, to find myself in that place again. i feel like i had no choice in what i was feeling back then, no way to stop it, no way to get over it. and i feel like it almost killed me.

so i learned my own personal survival skill: compartmentalizing. now, when things happen like what's happening with my grandfather and school and my feelings on my relationship, i compartmentalize. last week was so difficult for me because i was so out of control. and now that i've experienced it, let myself kind of go crazy for a little while, i can handle it better. i can put those feelings away in little pockets and deal with them in my own time. in my own way. i can think rationally about it, or not think about it at all.

and honestly, that is what's helping me get through the day at this point.

it's a bandaid. i realize that. but at least it stops the bleeding.


so i guess that's my roundabout way of saying that i feel better. that, at least for tonight, i feel in control of myself. maybe not my life, but myself. for now.

i'll figure out my life soon.
i'm taking it a step at a time.





i'm currently reading "eat, pray, love" which may either be a really good idea, or a really bad idea. we'll see.