Sleep-dep cycle hits the pensive stage.
Disclaimer: I'm tired. In fact I'm hovering on the edge of a collapse that's been threatening for weeks. Read the below rant with a large pinch of salt.
Am I the only one noticing the thread of discontent running through people at the moment? Everywhere I go, people seem to projecting this low-grade buzz of "I'm-in-a-rut-and-I-can't-get-out". They speak wistfully of the future and a craving for something new, fresh...a jolt to their lives.
Yet in almost the same breath, they reiterate how good their life is. They should be happy - from the outside, it looks like they are perfectly content. They have everything...and yet...
And yet, they're not happy. I can feel it myself, this claustrophobia, the impression of walls closing in to herd you in a fixed direction. The same place, the smae people, the same problems over and over and over until you want to scream, to tear things down or just to walk out the door and keep walking until you catch up with the you that you always wanted to be. The one that spat in the bully's face from the first day, that laughed at the authority figures you feared and hated. The one who never said never.
The clutter of life is building up and blocking out the rest of the world. It's a cage or it feels like it and the urge is simply to run. Put your head down and sprint off into the sunset. Get away, leave it behind. It's an insidious kind of feeling. Weeks of rote living, get up at 8, wash face, wash hands, have breakfast, go to work. Snatch at any chance to breathe, to create...simply to be.
Not the intern, not the office bitch, not the big sister who offers advice and rejection in the same breath. Just me. Doing what I want to do. It becomes seductive, then addictive. I chafe as I try to work, eyes darting to the clock. Ticking away until I can get out. Until my mind can skitter away in maybes and never-weres.
There is this (unfounded) feeling of hollowness, I don't remember what it was like to have a conversation with my parents that didn't degenerate into a litany of "So you've work/exams coming up...". I'm getting disconnected from people, I'm loosing the ties that bind us together and it scares me.
For the first time in my life, the people slipping away matter and I'm scrabbling after frayed threads only to realise I don't know what I'm doing. The learned technique is to let it slide away but I don't want to let it go. Those connections define much about me that I like and who I am. If they slip, I'm just me and I've to start again.
I don't think I can. I'm too tired, too empty, too cynical and too old. (I'm aware I'm only 21. I'm still older than that to me. Twenty-one years is a lifetime.) I stretched out and there's never enough hours in the day, enough solitude and enough companionship (characters aside). On bad days it's like juggling fragile crystals near a phone, praying that no-one rings because I can't spare the energy, I'm all out of comfort, compassion and empathy. Leave me be and I'll be fine. Reach out and you'll tip me off the high-wire which I'm ignoring on the strength of the fact that I hate heights so I wouldn't go near something like that ergo I haven't.
My balance is shot so I can't see things right any more. Maybe moving on will help, maybe it won't. I have a few months to think. Life isn't going to wait for me after that.
Am I the only one noticing the thread of discontent running through people at the moment? Everywhere I go, people seem to projecting this low-grade buzz of "I'm-in-a-rut-and-I-can't-get-out". They speak wistfully of the future and a craving for something new, fresh...a jolt to their lives.
Yet in almost the same breath, they reiterate how good their life is. They should be happy - from the outside, it looks like they are perfectly content. They have everything...and yet...
And yet, they're not happy. I can feel it myself, this claustrophobia, the impression of walls closing in to herd you in a fixed direction. The same place, the smae people, the same problems over and over and over until you want to scream, to tear things down or just to walk out the door and keep walking until you catch up with the you that you always wanted to be. The one that spat in the bully's face from the first day, that laughed at the authority figures you feared and hated. The one who never said never.
The clutter of life is building up and blocking out the rest of the world. It's a cage or it feels like it and the urge is simply to run. Put your head down and sprint off into the sunset. Get away, leave it behind. It's an insidious kind of feeling. Weeks of rote living, get up at 8, wash face, wash hands, have breakfast, go to work. Snatch at any chance to breathe, to create...simply to be.
Not the intern, not the office bitch, not the big sister who offers advice and rejection in the same breath. Just me. Doing what I want to do. It becomes seductive, then addictive. I chafe as I try to work, eyes darting to the clock. Ticking away until I can get out. Until my mind can skitter away in maybes and never-weres.
There is this (unfounded) feeling of hollowness, I don't remember what it was like to have a conversation with my parents that didn't degenerate into a litany of "So you've work/exams coming up...". I'm getting disconnected from people, I'm loosing the ties that bind us together and it scares me.
For the first time in my life, the people slipping away matter and I'm scrabbling after frayed threads only to realise I don't know what I'm doing. The learned technique is to let it slide away but I don't want to let it go. Those connections define much about me that I like and who I am. If they slip, I'm just me and I've to start again.
I don't think I can. I'm too tired, too empty, too cynical and too old. (I'm aware I'm only 21. I'm still older than that to me. Twenty-one years is a lifetime.) I stretched out and there's never enough hours in the day, enough solitude and enough companionship (characters aside). On bad days it's like juggling fragile crystals near a phone, praying that no-one rings because I can't spare the energy, I'm all out of comfort, compassion and empathy. Leave me be and I'll be fine. Reach out and you'll tip me off the high-wire which I'm ignoring on the strength of the fact that I hate heights so I wouldn't go near something like that ergo I haven't.
My balance is shot so I can't see things right any more. Maybe moving on will help, maybe it won't. I have a few months to think. Life isn't going to wait for me after that.