Be Fearless

I'm really glad that today is so rainy.  I'm a little stormy inside today, and it feels like Mother Nature is with me on this one.  We both know that the storms are what help the roots to spread and the plants to grow.

I'm not sad.  It's more pensive gloom than tears.  It's the realization that I still have a lot of self-shaping to do, that my true self still isn't strong enough to be completely free.  I also realize that growth is going to require more storms and maybe even big, grumbling earthquakes that force the scared little Me underneath all of this skin to crawl out to the surface and grow up, grow out.

Today started with a dream.  The scene was different, but the events and people were the same.  I was dreaming about a dream I've had for years now.  I woke up knowing that I wasn't ready for the dream to be reality.  It's not news to me that I'm not ready.  Since I started high school, I've been trying to grow into a body that is ready for that dream.  At times, it's all I can remember.  All of these struggles to become something are, at times, as far as my memory stretches.  I woke up to dreary rain.

Today really started at midnight, when I was on the phone with my mother.  She was very sympathetic, listening to me complain about my troubles as she always does.  I dominate our conversations, although I try not to.  Little Me gets lonely, though, and Mum is the only one that Little Me can talk to.  Mum knows everything about me, has watched me and known me since the day I was born.  She knows the things that I like to hide and the things that I don't even know about myself.  Little Me tells her many things, would probably tell Mum every thought if it were possible.

At midnight is when Mum told me the truth.  I'll always be grateful that I've been blessed with a mother who tells me the truth.  She's the one that showed Little Me how unprepared Little Me really is.  Little Me wants desperately to be Real Me, but is just too darn scared and small.  Little Me would never make it in the outside world.  For some reason, Little Me always holds back.

Mum told me honestly that all of my troubles are my own.  I am as much the cause of them as I can be the solution.  I'm the reason that I'm pulling away from my friends, not some stupid disorder.  I'm the reason that Wrestling makes me sick to my stomach, and I'm the reason why I can't look certain people in the eye.  Little Me is scared of everything, and Little Me never works hard enough to get past that.  Little Me tries to never break a sweat.

Well, honey, it's time to grow up.  Real Me is trying to be an adult, and you can't be a part of that unless you grow up.  Growing up means thunderstorms and earthquakes.  It means pushing yourself and doing everything that makes you uncomfortable and brings tears to your eyes.  It means letting your friends help you to do that.  It means being fearless.

Be fearless.  That's my new motto.  Be fearless.  Do all of the things that you've never wanted to.  Be a wrestler.  Longboard down the big hill.  Look that guy in the eyes, say hello.  Do them and soon you'll find that they've secretly been the things you've always wanted to do, but you've hidden that desire beneath pounds of skin and elephant-tons of fear.  I already know.  I've already started.

Scrape by scrape, I'm peeling off the paint.  Right now it's rainy outside, and I'm a little sad.  Little Me thought that growing up would be easy.  I thought I'd be ready for the dream by now.  I'm not.  In fact, I won't be for a long time. I recognize that now.  That makes me sad, too.  The dream might have run away by the time I'm ready.

But the wonderful thing is that, even though I might not always have this particular dream, even though right now it's all that I can see, I will always have something.  If it happens that the dream runs away, another one will come and take its place.  I'm a dreamer, and dreamers always have dreams.  Maybe by the time that Little Me grows up and becomes Real Me, I won't need the old dream anymore.  Maybe this dream is meant to be nothing more than a dream, something to wake up to and remember that there's still work for me to do.  Maybe not.

Either way, I'm peeling off my paint, layer by layer, scrape by scrape.  There's rain outside, a little like England.  A little like those mountains up in Scotland, where I felt my heart pulling me out of the coach, burying me in the ground.  A little like those green Irish hills, which lifted me up, gave me flowers.  A little like Washington, where a tiny, blond, pale baby was born to a mother that would always tell her the truth.  A little like all of the places that I've been.  A little like here, where I am; a little like Virginia.   A little like Little Me, who's trying to sprout.

How accurate, Snow Patrol.  I don't quite know how to say how I feel, either.

But my behavior is going past being sick and wanting to be curled up, alone in my bed.  I'm being pushed and pulled away from my friends.

It goes beyond the bad days that I had in the beginning of the week, or the bad experiences and conversations that made them so bad in the first place.  It's not the first time this has happened.

It shouldn't be like this.  I shouldn't have to have my friends explode on me on numerous occasions, pointing out every personality flaw and negative idiosyncrasy that makes me a bad friend.  Do I have a right to be hurt, even though there's truth in it?  Should I appreciate that my friends are honest with me or wonder if it's even worth the effort of ever pursuing a friendship, if who I am is not going to be good enough?

A part of me, and maybe it's the bad part, doesn't want to be around them.  I feel heavy judgment in their eyes, as they take my silence as stubbornness, arrogance, or distaste.  Is the fact that my friends think I don't want to be around them a testament to my physical withdrawal, or are they unconsciously trying to push me away?  Do they just tell themselves they're giving me space because secretly they feel I'm not worth the effort?

I don't know.  Maybe this isn't even me talking right now.  I hate to bring this up and never use it as an explanation for my behavior, but I feel that I at least owe whomever reads this a quick description.

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, a seasonal depression that usually takes hold during winter and is dispelled in early spring (in my case).  It has something to do with the lack of light; my doctor described it to me once, but I hardly paid attention.  My mother has it, as do I.  There are special lamps that you can buy and sitting under them for 15 minutes a day lightens the depression or something.  I've never bothered with those things.

Although my SAD has gotten exponentially lighter since I was first diagnosed in high school, it's still obvious, some days more than others.

Some symptoms, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, are:

• Afternoon slumps with decreased energy and concentration
• Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more typical of other forms of depression)
• Increased sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness (problems sleeping are more typical of other forms of depression)
• Lack of energy and loss of interest in work or other activities
• Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement
• Social withdrawal
• Unhappiness and irritability

Like I said, I don't like to use it as an excuse for my behavior, and often times I forget I was ever diagnosed with it.  For someone that's never had depression, it can seem silly.  I know, I've been there before.  But from the inside, it's like a transformation.  You're no longer in total control of yourself.  Something, whether a shift in hormones or drop in body temperature, is sitting inside of you and sometimes it gets a hold on you and takes control.  I'm lucky.  For me, the enslavement lifts once the world gets brighter.  Others don't get off so easy.

Anyway, this isn't about that.  Or, you know what, maybe it is.  But I still feel that I shouldn't have to feel guilty about wanting to make new friends every once in a while.  I shouldn't have to feel like every choice is between keeping my friends or making new ones.  Why can't I do both?  It's not wrong to make friends, and I know that to be a truth.  I hate that all of my choices lately seem to be forced into extremes.  Wrestle or lose my friends.  Be happy or lose my friends.  Stop being who I am or lose my friends.

The truth is that I'm trying every day to be a better person.  I really am.  The more that I try, the more that I find needs to be improved.  I know that I'll never be perfect, or even close, but I wish that for once I could be good enough for someone else.  That my faults weren't so huge that they angered my friends to bursting. 

...Happy Saint Patrick's Day.  

Deep Kimchi

With all of this concentration on my other blog, I nearly forgot about this one altogether.  But as I wait for a time to go to bed and try to fight my urge to eat, I need to do something with myself.  Something that's not staring at HTML code for hours and getting all of the little details sorted.

I've done absolutely nothing today.  I'm mostly okay with that.  It's Spring Break, I shouldn't have to do anything.

But the truth is that I do have something to do.  Or prepare for.  Or, as I've been doing, ignore completely.  That's right, people, I'm talking about Nationals.  I'm terrified.

I know that if I start thinking about it I'll start psyching myself out, and I'll start dreading it, and it will be the worst experience I could possibly have.  So, to cope, I'm pretending that if I ignore it until the last possible second, it will go away.

Ugh.  My veins are filled with sluggish dread.  I can feel it dragging along inside of me, weighty and thick.  If it reaches my heart, my body will tremble and collapse.  Can't let that happen.

Let's talk about something else.  Like how I just shoved a fistful of Frosted Flakes in my mouth.  I had better brush my teeth so I won't eat anything else.  Or how I still haven't put on clothes after the shower that I took four hours ago.  Or how that's perfectly acceptable because I am alone.

I wonder if this is what living alone will be like.  I wonder if I'll have any friends after I graduate and move away from everybody, or if I'll sit in my apartment and work on my blog layout all day long and eat Frosted Flakes by the fistful.  Unproductive little child.

I just remembered that there's kimchi in the fridge.  Good thing I brushed my teeth.

Yes, I am terrified.  Yes, I understand that I don't have any reason to be.  Yes, I know that I will be at least twice as happy once wrestling is over, but in a few months I will be wishing for it again.  That's how love-hate relationships go.

No, I do not know where my life is going.  I don't even know what I'm going to do for school next year.  That terrifies me too, but you will see a pattern emerging when I tell you that I'm not thinking about next year, either.  No, I don't mind if you think I'm insane.  No, I don't think that I enjoy cutting weight at all.  But who does?

Goodnight, friends.  I'm going to journal and plan my productiveness for tomorrow.