Hello, blogging world, it’s been a few months! I actually opened my computer to keep working on a paper for my Intimate Relationships class. Yes, you did read that whole sentence right. Yes, I’m writing a paper while on Spring Break. Yes, I’m in an Intimate Relationships class… I thought it was an area I lacked in and thought I could figure some things out. Anyways, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing the past few months. Wake up, train clients, class, lunch, class, work and train more clients, workout, dinner, homework, bed, repeat. That cycle doesn’t necessarily sound like a bad thing. Until I realized that it’s been months since I just sat down and talked and hung out with any of my friends. Or until I realized that I had a crazy amount of thoughts in my head that I hadn’t written out. Until I realized I had begun drowning in my thoughts, losing myself as I sank lower and lower. Until I realized how much time I spend not trying to have a mental breakdown. Or until I realized every time I’m doing something, I’m thinking and planning for the next three things I have to do.
Reflecting on my life, especially my years at Berry, I’ve been a pretty successful person overall. For the most part, when I’ve really wanted something and really worked hard for it, I’ve gotten it and I’ve done well with it. Pretty much until this year. Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few things that have really marked success in my life since starting my Junior year, like starting my own research, but it’s really the more basic or fundamental things that have stumped me. Which is just really backwards and I get more frustrated because it just doesn’t make sense.
Let me try to explain.
I’m not angry, I’m not sad, I’m lost. Actually, I don’t know maybe I am angry and maybe I am sad, and maybe I’m even both because truth be told, I just don’t know anymore.
I spent my Fall semester dealing and coping with events that happened at the end of a prior relationship. It was not an easy time and I really feel so thankful for my youth group because they’re smiling faces full of pure joy and love twice a week really pushed me to keep going and pushed me to want to be better for them. I had a great support system at school that kept me from completely losing myself in a battle that I felt I was fighting alone. Most of them had no idea what I was going through, but being surrounded by people with such outflowing love was so helpful. I spent last semester convincing myself, and then believing, that I can’t take responsibility for anyone’s actions or words besides my own. I spent all my emotional energy getting myself to a point of believing that somebody else’s words and how they react, has nothing to do with me or my worth, but more to do with them and who they are, so if they decided to respond in a negative way, it’s not that I’m not good enough or I could’ve done something better, but that was their choice and it tells me more about them than about myself.
So while thinking through all of this, sorting it out, getting a glimpse of the needle buried deep in the haystack, I put this guy, one of my best friends (number 2 to be exact) on the back burner. I denied that he had told me he had feelings for me and I denied to myself that the feelings were mutual because it seemed so unfair to drag him through that haystack to even get a glimpse of the needle. I didn’t think it was something good, to be with someone else when I hadn’t even gotten over what had happened with someone before. So by the time I got to the point of being happy with myself and where I was with my prior relationship and was ready to admit to myself and my best friend that I had been hiding from him and that I knew everything and he wasn’t alone in it, I was too late and he had given someone else a chance who wasn’t going to keep him waiting. I honestly think about it every day and think about how I wish I had done something more.
Okay so yeah, typical girl in college upset because of a boy, no big deal. In the midst of feeling not good enough and like a huge loser from all of that, I had started the second part of Anatomy and Physiology where I had no idea that the untold part of the course was that we would all go crazy trying to figure out how to pass a quiz. My anatomy professor from the Fall passed away from cancer, and the whole department was in shambles trying to find a replacement. So I’ve basically spent the past couple months trying to figure out how to be successful in this class. You know, most people have to figure out how to study or how the professor teaches, etc., right? I’ve done it all, we’ve done it all. The whole class has tried to figure out how to be successful and I still don’t know. I. have. No. idea. Every second I have, I have my anatomy book open or my PowerPoints open, or my notes open, just trying to catch a glimore of success in this class.
I’ve never in my life been trying so hard and not be successful. And the thing is, I don’t know if I’m more unsuccessful because I can’t pass anything in my anatomy class despite hours a day studying and the guy who was my best friends who I fell for won’t even talk to me now, or if I’m more unsuccessful because I’m not enjoying any part of what this life has to offer me right now. I spend every day on the most beautiful campus in the entire world, and I see it as I walk to work and classes, and I see it behind the windows of the Cage. I have the most amazing people in my life who I don’t get to laugh with because I’m so incredibly scared of failure.
I had everything planned. I had my grad schools picked out, the money it would cost, when I would start, when to take the GRE, and now I just don’t know. Kind of like when you go to the store to get dtuff to make a very specific recipe and you get all the way home and unload and you can basically taste the fantastic meal but then you realize you don’t have any butter. So not only do I not know if I CAN do it, but I don’t even know if it’s what I want to do anymore. I’ve thrown my whole being into something that I no longer know if I can handle. Or even if I want to handle anymore. And I tell myself every single day that I know deep down that I’ll be okay and I know deep down that I don’t have to have it all figured out right now or even a year from now. I tell myself every day that I’m not alone, that despite my many flaws and mistakes, that I have a God who loves me more than I could ever imagine and I tell myself that I trust Him.. but do I? If I really, truly trusted Him, I wouldn’t be so scared or so anxious or so confused. But it’s hard to trust somebody who feels so distant. It’s hard to know that God is with me but not feel Him.
I guess I’m in a season of my life where I just don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to get the things that I think I want. I don’t know what to do or how to feel about losing one of my best friends, I don’t know where to go from here.
The things I do know? I do know that I will be okay and I do know that I will find what I want to do and I will be happy. I do know that as much as I want to know what I want to do with my life, I never want to settle, I want to forever pursue things to make me better. I do know that even when I feel He is so far away, God is with me and He loves me.
Cheers to the unknown.