Ramblings.
You find yourself driving around at 1 in the morning, wondering where you can stop, where you can rest your head, where everything can stand still for just an hour or so, without disturbing anyone else or taking up a space you're not allowed to take up. Every car that drives by makes you jittery and sad, because you know that you're the intruder on that street, on that block, and they've got somewhere to be, an ultimate destination, home. But the word "home" doesn't occur to you at that particular moment, out of pure survival. Your protection. Perhaps another wall, but you choose to ignore that as well.
You also know you brought it upon yourself and even now, as you wander aimless and exhausted, you can't see it happening differently if you somehow had a hundred chances to do everything all over again. It's difficult to weigh the desire for personal freedom against the necessities of living and comfort and then to actually make some sort of choice between the two. It's even harder to stick to your own convictions and plans and choices, when so many others are against them, disappointed with them, frustrated with them, with you.
As always, I come across this brick wall again. Other people deciding where I should be and when I should be there and what I should be doing. They all make their plans and any deviation from them is a huge failure on my part. And I sit to the side, quietly making my own decisions and goals and steps toward what is, no matter what they all seem to think, MY future. I have and will make many mistakes in my life, but they are mine to make. And I am an intelligent, semi-rational, able human being and contrary to popular belief, can think for myself and live capably on my own merit.
One can look at my life and list my successes and failures to this point and wonder how I can even utter one word of disagreement with the many critics of my life choices thus far. I am not in college yet, I am tied up in yards of red tape concerning my tutoring and GED and my old high school, I've got no permanent home and instead just float from friend to friend and couch to carseat, I uprooted myself completely from all old ties and moved to an entirely different state, I have a job at Subway and job prospects with Ruby Tuesday that may or may not pan out in September, I have a car that's falling apart at the seams, I'm broke. My life has never gone smoothly. There has never been apparent textbook elements to it. What people expect of a 16 year old and an 18 year old and whatever I am or was at the time usually does not happen to me or in my life. I was in a clinic, in therapy, suicidal, cutting, I had to drop out of school, get tutored, move several times, between several people. I've held two jobs with no problems. Lost one other job where I ran into many problems but became employed at another only three weeks after losing it. I went after my GED, took my GED tests, got caught up in red tape with the aforementioned tutoring and GED results that I'm still trying to sort out with my idiotic high school guidance office and aloof Board of Education of Connecticut. I've taken classes at Tunxis Community College (a full years worth). I'm now broke because of various car troubles, gas, and life necessities, and the sudden loss of the job, so I'm forced to build up from scratch, in a new state, with my new job, and no real home to rest in. And all I can do now is work, save up all of my money, and rebuild. And it will happen, even if it's not at the speed everyone else wishes of me. I will save up for a good used car, first. And there is a guest room in progress in Ev's house, and I think it might pan out that I can stay there until I can get an apartment. With a bit of money saved up, I can also start more community college classes in the spring semester, once I'm a bit more settled here and not completely broke (97 cents in my savings account does not count as having money :p ).
Once again, contrary to popular belief, I'm not just some careless puff swirling around in the air, directionless and waiting for some solid surface to ram into or for some savior to pick me up. I do have plans. I am working toward them.
What has frustrated me the most in all of this is the way everyone chooses to communicate their displeasure. People who should be talking directly to me, like family, choose to talk through other channels, who then are forced to mediate between all of us and who are immediately dipped right into the middle of everything without choice or warning. And then there are others, who are not and have never been close to me, who have not had conversations with me that lasted longer than 5 minutes, who know little to nothing about me, who decide that they know everything I'm doing and that it is, of course, very wrong. And everyone expresses their "deep concern" and "frustration" and sadness over the fact that I'm not doing the "most to better my life." all through second parties. So I'm constantly approached by unlikely people who tell me someone is deeply disappointed with me and by the way, what's this all about?
It's slowly driving me insane. Chipping away at my nerves and my patience. I'd be happy to just leave them completely out of my life, but the feeling, unfortunately, isn't mutual. And all of the messengers continue to deliver the lectures and concerns, because they have little choice but to carry out the job that was thrusted upon them.
And I hear it enough, that, at times, something slips through and all of the disappointment and frustration directed toward me breaks through and completely eats away at me. I'll hear ten of them and easily shrug it all off and then the next comes and I'm brought to tears, immediately stressed and upset and barely able to deal with it all, on top of the current stresses of living independently. It builds up and I just keep hoping the messengers will shirk their duty for once or everyone else will finally give me up as a lost cause or mind their own business when it comes to the life of a person they barely know.
And above it all, I'm not so fond of how I can sometimes be when I'm trying to handle all of the stress. At certain times, I'm shorter with everyone, get frustrated and upset more easily, it becomes easier to give up on little things, to get angry with people, to cause other small conflicts that will just add to the stress. And by trying to not be short at the times I feel short, or any of the other things listed, I'm just adding MORE stress. It's a stupid, mean cycle.
And I'm a stupid little girl who will somehow deal with being an adult and with everyone else dealing with being an adult. I'll have my 1 AM drives and write these journal entries out and still go through my days and usually be fine with it all. Because that's what life is. Dealing with things and making your mistakes and making your connections with people and sometimes even letting in something happy or worthy and in the end, being just fine with it all.
Or something.
You also know you brought it upon yourself and even now, as you wander aimless and exhausted, you can't see it happening differently if you somehow had a hundred chances to do everything all over again. It's difficult to weigh the desire for personal freedom against the necessities of living and comfort and then to actually make some sort of choice between the two. It's even harder to stick to your own convictions and plans and choices, when so many others are against them, disappointed with them, frustrated with them, with you.
As always, I come across this brick wall again. Other people deciding where I should be and when I should be there and what I should be doing. They all make their plans and any deviation from them is a huge failure on my part. And I sit to the side, quietly making my own decisions and goals and steps toward what is, no matter what they all seem to think, MY future. I have and will make many mistakes in my life, but they are mine to make. And I am an intelligent, semi-rational, able human being and contrary to popular belief, can think for myself and live capably on my own merit.
One can look at my life and list my successes and failures to this point and wonder how I can even utter one word of disagreement with the many critics of my life choices thus far. I am not in college yet, I am tied up in yards of red tape concerning my tutoring and GED and my old high school, I've got no permanent home and instead just float from friend to friend and couch to carseat, I uprooted myself completely from all old ties and moved to an entirely different state, I have a job at Subway and job prospects with Ruby Tuesday that may or may not pan out in September, I have a car that's falling apart at the seams, I'm broke. My life has never gone smoothly. There has never been apparent textbook elements to it. What people expect of a 16 year old and an 18 year old and whatever I am or was at the time usually does not happen to me or in my life. I was in a clinic, in therapy, suicidal, cutting, I had to drop out of school, get tutored, move several times, between several people. I've held two jobs with no problems. Lost one other job where I ran into many problems but became employed at another only three weeks after losing it. I went after my GED, took my GED tests, got caught up in red tape with the aforementioned tutoring and GED results that I'm still trying to sort out with my idiotic high school guidance office and aloof Board of Education of Connecticut. I've taken classes at Tunxis Community College (a full years worth). I'm now broke because of various car troubles, gas, and life necessities, and the sudden loss of the job, so I'm forced to build up from scratch, in a new state, with my new job, and no real home to rest in. And all I can do now is work, save up all of my money, and rebuild. And it will happen, even if it's not at the speed everyone else wishes of me. I will save up for a good used car, first. And there is a guest room in progress in Ev's house, and I think it might pan out that I can stay there until I can get an apartment. With a bit of money saved up, I can also start more community college classes in the spring semester, once I'm a bit more settled here and not completely broke (97 cents in my savings account does not count as having money :p ).
Once again, contrary to popular belief, I'm not just some careless puff swirling around in the air, directionless and waiting for some solid surface to ram into or for some savior to pick me up. I do have plans. I am working toward them.
What has frustrated me the most in all of this is the way everyone chooses to communicate their displeasure. People who should be talking directly to me, like family, choose to talk through other channels, who then are forced to mediate between all of us and who are immediately dipped right into the middle of everything without choice or warning. And then there are others, who are not and have never been close to me, who have not had conversations with me that lasted longer than 5 minutes, who know little to nothing about me, who decide that they know everything I'm doing and that it is, of course, very wrong. And everyone expresses their "deep concern" and "frustration" and sadness over the fact that I'm not doing the "most to better my life." all through second parties. So I'm constantly approached by unlikely people who tell me someone is deeply disappointed with me and by the way, what's this all about?
It's slowly driving me insane. Chipping away at my nerves and my patience. I'd be happy to just leave them completely out of my life, but the feeling, unfortunately, isn't mutual. And all of the messengers continue to deliver the lectures and concerns, because they have little choice but to carry out the job that was thrusted upon them.
And I hear it enough, that, at times, something slips through and all of the disappointment and frustration directed toward me breaks through and completely eats away at me. I'll hear ten of them and easily shrug it all off and then the next comes and I'm brought to tears, immediately stressed and upset and barely able to deal with it all, on top of the current stresses of living independently. It builds up and I just keep hoping the messengers will shirk their duty for once or everyone else will finally give me up as a lost cause or mind their own business when it comes to the life of a person they barely know.
And above it all, I'm not so fond of how I can sometimes be when I'm trying to handle all of the stress. At certain times, I'm shorter with everyone, get frustrated and upset more easily, it becomes easier to give up on little things, to get angry with people, to cause other small conflicts that will just add to the stress. And by trying to not be short at the times I feel short, or any of the other things listed, I'm just adding MORE stress. It's a stupid, mean cycle.
And I'm a stupid little girl who will somehow deal with being an adult and with everyone else dealing with being an adult. I'll have my 1 AM drives and write these journal entries out and still go through my days and usually be fine with it all. Because that's what life is. Dealing with things and making your mistakes and making your connections with people and sometimes even letting in something happy or worthy and in the end, being just fine with it all.
Or something.