I feel much like a sapling.
Once again, I must move out of my current home and into the great unknown that is Portland. Just when I was starting to feel comfortable and just when I was beginning to meet wonderful people and make friends, the inevitable change of things has to come and fuck it all up. I'm starting over. All over. Completely over. Once I move into the city, my current job will have to become a thing of the past. I feel taken advantage of there; working for minimum wage when I'm doing the work of two people every night. Mat and I. Mat and I are the babysitters of the newcomers. We are forced to supervise and dictate to all those fresh new faces of the food industry. Even the new owner doesn't know how to properly run a restaraunt. Many nights I find myself cooking on the line and then closing in the kitchen, and after that, closing out front because no one else knows how to. This lack of knowledge on everyone elses part except ours is overwhelming and frustrating. It is understandable to not completely understand the flow of things, and it is also alright to admit that you don't know, and to accept guidance and learn, but when everyone is ignorant, and no one knows how to run the business, it becomes only a matter of time before it falls apart completely. I feel trapped by it. I feel like this new boss, this new owner is taking advantage of these skills that it has taken Mat and I over a year to fully learn. We are still learning. Everyday we are learning. I am learning. I go to school mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, and I work tuesdays, thursdays, friday nights, and saturdays. This forceful absorbtion of newly learned things has become a dreaded task for me each day. I would just like for once to be able to let go completely and fall freely into something soft and simple and fluidly fundamental to being calm. I need to feel calm. I am being quickly uprooted from my home, my job, and school makes me feel ironically more ostracized every day more I'm there.
I went to a party in town with a friend, and there I ran into a girl that I have class with at Portland State. These strange connections have been surfacing with more and more clarity in the last few months. Last night alone, within the span of an hour, I ran into three people that I had known from my past in places that I didn't know we could coexist in. It was fascinating and frustrating all at the same time. How many more of these cohabitations and relationships through mutual friends am I not aware of? How do these people that I know from somewhere so seemingly disconnected know other people and other friends that live in such a communal environment that i am familiar with?
I am not in a good place. Most of my time is spent anxiously worrying about moving and searching for a job and dealing with school and worrying worrying worrying all the time about everything and everyone stop. Once again the logistics of my thought processes and my emotions are fighting with one another. Stop thinking this way. There is no reason to worry. There is no reason to feel anxious. This too will eventually work out. But I feel so afraid to take this step and to be alone again. I feel so afraid and so caught up in how I feel now and what I want to feel and who I want to feel it with. So many ways of feeling that I just can't feel anything anymore. I'm numb. Numb with anxiety and fear of the unknown. I am so fearful that I am letting it get in the way of enjoying what I have and who I have now. Change is slowly tearing me down. But somehow I have to be tenacious and pull myself through. There is such overwhelming pressure for me to be independent, but I can't do it. I love people. I love feeling the way that people do. I love laughing with people talking with people crying with people being just being with people. Without that what is there. Without relating and without coexisting, there is nothing. There is no one. We are each other.
Maybe this change is good for me. A certain necessary reinvention of myself that has been waiting and wanting to happen for so long. Maybe this is that change.
But I'm just not sure about anything anymore.
I went to a party in town with a friend, and there I ran into a girl that I have class with at Portland State. These strange connections have been surfacing with more and more clarity in the last few months. Last night alone, within the span of an hour, I ran into three people that I had known from my past in places that I didn't know we could coexist in. It was fascinating and frustrating all at the same time. How many more of these cohabitations and relationships through mutual friends am I not aware of? How do these people that I know from somewhere so seemingly disconnected know other people and other friends that live in such a communal environment that i am familiar with?
I am not in a good place. Most of my time is spent anxiously worrying about moving and searching for a job and dealing with school and worrying worrying worrying all the time about everything and everyone stop. Once again the logistics of my thought processes and my emotions are fighting with one another. Stop thinking this way. There is no reason to worry. There is no reason to feel anxious. This too will eventually work out. But I feel so afraid to take this step and to be alone again. I feel so afraid and so caught up in how I feel now and what I want to feel and who I want to feel it with. So many ways of feeling that I just can't feel anything anymore. I'm numb. Numb with anxiety and fear of the unknown. I am so fearful that I am letting it get in the way of enjoying what I have and who I have now. Change is slowly tearing me down. But somehow I have to be tenacious and pull myself through. There is such overwhelming pressure for me to be independent, but I can't do it. I love people. I love feeling the way that people do. I love laughing with people talking with people crying with people being just being with people. Without that what is there. Without relating and without coexisting, there is nothing. There is no one. We are each other.
Maybe this change is good for me. A certain necessary reinvention of myself that has been waiting and wanting to happen for so long. Maybe this is that change.
But I'm just not sure about anything anymore.