poop

[elvendoll]

i am in a shitty mood.
i wrote a whole whiny entry about it and deleted it.
a journal shouldn't be about whining, but about reflection, damnit?
so where does that leave me?
still in a shitty mood with a desire to spew...
i'm trying hard not to take it out on bill & he's being wonderfully understanding...

i came to a realization a few days ago.
i am growing up.
when i look down to my body, i don't feel like there's extra length i'm not used to.
i look in the mirror and wanna sigh because i don't think i have the face of a teenager anymore. and that doesn't feel weird in the right way.

but damnit, i don't want to be grown up! i don' want to accept what age i am!

why?
well.. i am a failure for my age.
why?
because i am too scared of failing.
whenever i get insecure about something, i avoid it, give myself anxiety attacks by being angry at myself for avoiding it, and when i try to fight the cycle, i feel like i'm running into a bullet-proof glass door - i can see exactly whats on the other side... i can even see the path there... but somehow its blocked from me.
*sigh*
and of course i use a glass door as an analogy because its external.
like when i've been driving bill to work since friday, and i have to wait more then a minute for him after i'm ready, i get really angry and resentful of him. but 1 minute doesn't change anything when i was running 14 minutes late right along with him.
or getting denied for a credit card today. a part of me wants to be bullshit with chris because i know him not paying the cellphone that (as i found last month) i am entirely financially responsible for is a black mark on my credit report. but the truth is is that i am sure i've left several black marks of my own. nothing huge, but little things like putting off paying bills for a month or two. and the sad part is is its never been because id on't have the money... its more that i just don't get around to doing it. how stupid is that?!
blah.
i sit here and think 'how did i ever get to be such a fuckup' ... only to realize that in an odd way, i've always been a fuckup - its almost like i pick areas of my life to neglect * fuck up over,a nd the rest goes by almost ok...
like when i was a kid, i was a social failure at school - like the one scrawny kid noone would talk to. but i was friends with all the kids in my buidling, who just happened to go to a different school.
and for the majority of my life, i never had friends at school. and then i started hating school and fucked up my grades.
blah. this isn't a pleasant thought proccess at all - mission aborted.

my mom told me today i should take a vacation... told me i should go to florida. i honestly don't know how my mom manages to be so great & patient with me. when i tell her about shit going on in my life, she tells me the truth (its the same things tobi tells me, so its gotta be right : P ) and tells me to see a shrink & relax... but she really tries to understand how i feel and why... which in my opinion is just amazing in a parent. although i think she's getting skewed on one thing... i think she's going a little too freudian on the not communicating with my father thing. like she told me the other day when i was complaining about the matty situation that its anger at my father thats making me hypersenstive to the world. and i don't think thats it at all. because for the most part, i've got a thick wall around my father right now, buthave major problems dealing with anger, period. its funny - i keep thinking about people i know who've taken anger management courses... but i get stuck in this box that anger management courses help people who express their anger in the wrong way - meanwhile i feel like i don't know how to properly express anger at all, and it just sits there in me like the ulcer it aggrvates.

yeah.

*bleagh*

Comments

[ged.livejournal.com]

I really don't think its possible to be a failure at the age of 21. Most of life is before you, with all its wonderful potential.

Now that I think of it, I don't think its possible to be a failure at the age of 41 even. I know a woman who at 41 had been married 22 years and had four kids, the youngest of whom was 10. She had never had a job. She finally went to college and became of all things a computer programmer. She's now a self-employed contractor, makes more money than just about anyone I know (certainly two times more than her husband), and loves her work. And yet when she was 41 -- FORTY-ONE -- she felt like she had done nothing with her life.

So please stop and smell the roses and enjoy being 21, and don't even worry about being 22 yet.

:-)

[lostphrack.livejournal.com]

Yeah! If anyone gets to worry about being a failure at 22 it's me damnit.

[tobi.livejournal.com]

somehow i think your mom and i would get along great. i think i told you once that i thought your father had a lot to do with some of your anger.

as for the worrying about being a failure part. well...as long as you're still trying, you're not failing. i mean if you say "oh here's my problem" and leave it at that, then its not counterproductive. but you need to find out how to fix it. sometimes that means dissecting it down to the smallest things.

take me and how i get pissy all the time. behaviors are hard to change. i just can't wake up and love the world. so i started documenting every time i get aggravated. it helped me look at how often i get frustrated and put things in perspective. then when i feel myself get aggravted ath people on the train or whatever, i just think of that list and how i felt in my more lucid moments and i find i have been able to let it go. but you have to start small. maybe document all of the times you get annoyed or frustrated with something. then when you're feeling sane, look at it objectively and figure out where that anger came from. 99% of anger is misplaced. or at least when you flip out on someone. so sometimes it helps

and dammit see a shrink.

granted, i am biased, but i think everyone in the world should be seeing shrink.

[maxievenus.livejournal.com]

I wasn't doing much better at 22. Sure, I'd finished college. Then what? I had no idea what to do with my life.

My life didn't finally start making some sense until 24. I finally found a career at 29, and I'm still trying to decide exactly what to do within that field at 30.

I look at other people my age and think I'm not accomplishing enough. I guess it's really all about what you expect of yourself. It's all perspective. There are probably other 21 year olds out there who compare themselves to you and think they're the failures.

Anyway, it's never too late in life to do what you want.

[elvendoll.livejournal.com]

hrmm...

...well, most of the time i can smell at least some of the roses ... just somtimes, the other side overwhelms me...

one of my problems is that i don't have any goals for the future. the future is such a vague concept to me, and i have looked inside of me, and looked inside of me, and don't find any... i just know some things i don't want to be, and things i don't want to do...
but i also don't want to close any doors for myself, for when i find what it is i want to do, i don't want it to be out of my reach.
but i also have personal expectations - of (semi) sanity, coherency, competency, and culture in my life. and i've found myself unable or unwilling to maintain my personal standards of living, which is failing... which is not to say that i'm considering this predicament final or giving up - but i think admitting to having fucked up is the first step of getting better, isn't it? ...just kind of wish the second step didn't seem so out of reach...
and i think another part of it is that i when i was younger i had all these visions of what being grown up would be - being an independent, spunky city girl, having my shit together, going out all the time, travelling a lot - and thats just not the way my life is panning out. school stresses me out too much because i've set myself a goal for graduation (graduating cum laude & with honors), and living broke ends up being the straw that breaks the camel's back... while at work, i have money, i can feel good about when i do the jobstuff right, but i can't travel & am usually too tired to do much when i get home. and most of the time i am able to accept this, but sometimes it bothers me that my own weaknesses are the only things preventing me from living the life i've always only imagined.. because other people can work & go to school and handle it.. or work & go out afterwards & can handle it..

hrmm... wonder if that babble made any sense at all...

[elvendoll.livejournal.com]

does this mean you're going to be out & about & doing stuff more??

you know... i was looking at online classes at bunker hill.. and they have writing classes there, too... you just might want to consider that ; )

~yulia, never going to stop trying to get you into school

[elvendoll.livejournal.com]

as for the worrying about being a failure part. well...as long as you're still trying, you're not failing. i mean if you say "oh here's my problem" and leave it at that, then its not counterproductive. but you need to find out how to fix it. sometimes that means dissecting it down to the smallest things.

i think you hit the nail on the head right there...
it feels to me like i get as far as pointing out the problem, but when i try to work it out, either i don't succeed or just develop another in the proccess! i think my school experience was the perfect example. my grades were mediocre... until one day i realized thats a problem. so i started working on getting my GPA up - and i did - but developed this fear of failing/anxiety thing that pretty much nearly crippled me during the fall... so one problem solved, another one there - and that one i am still fighting...

[elvendoll.livejournal.com]

out of curiousity - what had you majored in?

[ged.livejournal.com]

OK, the future is kind of vague. You have a tough time imagining future-Elvendoll. Reverse it for the moment. What are you thankful to past-Elvendoll for accomplishing? What decisions that past-Elvendoll made bug you?

For instance, I love that past-Ged married young and had four kids. That was a good decision for him that I benefit from. On the other hand, I hate that past-Ged worked so much that he never exercised or took care of his body or ate well or kept his resolution to work out three times a week. As now-Ged I hope to leave future-Ged with a body in much better shape. I'm very disappointed that past-Ged never finished any of the four or five books he started writing. While its a lot of work, now-Ged thinks he owes future-Ged a finished book, so future-Ged can be the author past-Ged always wanted him to be.

Best regards,

now-Ged

[lostphrack.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I don't want to sound rude or anything, but I usually don't consider a social life, or lack there of in this case ;), as a measurement of success or failure.

My coming out tends to be a result of general sloth and anti-socialnessisisisty.

The college this is always in the back of mind, I've had people on the other side of the country that I hardly know suggest college to me, both community and their own. So..who knows..

Re:

[maxievenus.livejournal.com]

My freshman year I majored in Astronomy, which was pretty much like majoring in Physics. I completely burned out and switched to English. I do regret that a bit now. The English degree hasn't really done much for me. Basically, it just helps that I have a degree at all. What I really wish is that I was 5 years younger and could have studied Computer Science instead. When I was at UMass/Amherst, Computer Science wasn't a very popular major. I don't think we even had Windows 3.1 yet.

[elvendoll.livejournal.com]

thank you : )
that was definately some great food for thought / new perspective i'll have to spend some time mulling over : )

i guess a part of that way of thinking, though (at least in my existential-leaning head) is the importance of past choices... and i know i've written a whole journal entry about it, but i can't find it now, but i feel like most of the important choices in my life have been very passive choices - like somehow options b and c would fall through, and here i am leading a life determined by a whole series of option a's, which could be considered more falling into my lap then being fully chosen.... if that makes any sense at all...

[ged.livejournal.com]

Making active choices is so important and so powerful. Next time you're in my office remind me I have a book for you -- its really just the last chapter and appendix, but its funny and thought-provoking and about the power of our personal visions of our futures.