The world is too much with us
There's so much feeling and sensation. I can't turn it off inside my head, it's like I'm feeling everything. I'm unbearably happy and desperately woeful. I'm pining and longing for the same thing I have my whole life - something. I don't know what it is. An off switch, maybe. It's a torrent, a deluge and it doesn't stop.
Sometimes I'll sit for hours just trying to find my way in all of it. It's all so much. I feel like breaking with the weight of all the - feelings. Like I'm going to shatter if I don't sit perfectly still and wait for it to pass. It's like the wires are crossed and my brain doesn't understand what it should be doing so it turns every dial up to ten and it's all so much at once, too much, and I can't think, let alone move. Just... existing becomes an effort. Not washing away or washing out.
It sounds ridiculous. It's the closest I've come to describing "the mood." Not sadness or light, just a terrifying maelstrom of everything I have ever felt at the same time.
Too sensitive. I'm trying to stay anchored right now. This exercise is helping, describing it is helping.
It's so easy to get lost when that feeling hits. I wasn't kidding about the sitting still for hours part. It defies easy description. Lost - drowning is the best word.
But enough of that. Being self aware helps. Writing it out - though I've never tried the method before - helps.
So. Hello again. Everything is falling apart in a mostly-benign kind of way. Hello, I'm going back to school to become [REDACTED]. Sorry, a life needs (semi) secret plans. Hello, my job is forcing me to choose between school and work and if you have a dream I can't imagine anything should ever stand in your way, let alone a pathetic excuse for your firing. Hello, I'm going on an adventure starting with not having a job and living in an empty house all by myself that I can't afford. But I think it's okay.
The marvel is that it will be okay. I'm so used to panicking, so used to everything at once and noticing all of it - the raised tissue ache of the half-healing open wound in my mouth, probably caused by biting my cheek in my sleep. The awkward pressure on my pinkie, the uncomfortable fullness of unpopped cervical vertebrae, all of the textures and temperatures enveloping me. What I'm getting at is that I am usually intensely aware of myself in my environment and so I am generally intensely uncomfortable. Relaxing is... difficult.
But it feels okay. There's no panic. There's the empty space where the panic came and went and now it's just quiet.
So this is how I know that I will make it out alive and well on the other side of...it.
With regard to my recent birthday, I'd like to list some memories and events that would be nice to keep.
- Performing on stage in the Vagina Monologues (terrified)
- Maintaining a long distance relationship for nine months
- Nashville; Cheekwood. The slow unfurling of a day with no plans and the gradual realization that it was okay. The ambling, delicious pace of it all. The gentle companionship.
- Terrified and speaking to a class of high schoolers anyway
- Terrified and climbing the rock wall anyway
- Terrified and completing the high ropes course anyway (memorable: "Fuck it, let's do this shit," and throwing myself into empty air before I could properly grasp how terrified I was)
- No longer taking for granted the simple act of waking up slow next to someone you love
- Committee-membering the fuck out of an excellent event for women's reproductive health. Hanging lanterns from an oversize ladder (while being scared of heights), counter-protesting protestors while standing in four inch heels and grinning, welcoming guests over the idiot bleatings of anti-choice sad-sacks with megaphones.
- My first 5k; the exhilaration and pride. The incredible ease of stretching afterwards. My fastest mile and fastest three miles.
It was a good year, 25. A stretch year. It was a year for getting better at maintaining relationships, the year I learned that unless I put plans on my calendar, they won't happen. It was the year I learned that being terrified and doing it anyway is some of the best life advice I've ever taken, and that each time I'm slightly less terrified. It was a growth year, the year I figured out what the hell I wanted to do with my life and started to understand the depth of sacrifice I would have to make.
26 will be better yet, and has already proven so with its tumultuous beginning. In a few months I will meet one of my oldest and best friends for the first time in New York, a strange city, a lovely adventure that terrifies (duh, it's a theme) and thrills me. She loved me before I knew how to love myself, and loves me still.
And, well, hello, unemployed you soon. Hello, lover that might not be long distance soon. Hello, hello. It is all beautiful and I have so much anticipation for all of it, simply all of it is going to be brilliant and grand.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.
Sometimes I'll sit for hours just trying to find my way in all of it. It's all so much. I feel like breaking with the weight of all the - feelings. Like I'm going to shatter if I don't sit perfectly still and wait for it to pass. It's like the wires are crossed and my brain doesn't understand what it should be doing so it turns every dial up to ten and it's all so much at once, too much, and I can't think, let alone move. Just... existing becomes an effort. Not washing away or washing out.
It sounds ridiculous. It's the closest I've come to describing "the mood." Not sadness or light, just a terrifying maelstrom of everything I have ever felt at the same time.
Too sensitive. I'm trying to stay anchored right now. This exercise is helping, describing it is helping.
It's so easy to get lost when that feeling hits. I wasn't kidding about the sitting still for hours part. It defies easy description. Lost - drowning is the best word.
But enough of that. Being self aware helps. Writing it out - though I've never tried the method before - helps.
So. Hello again. Everything is falling apart in a mostly-benign kind of way. Hello, I'm going back to school to become [REDACTED]. Sorry, a life needs (semi) secret plans. Hello, my job is forcing me to choose between school and work and if you have a dream I can't imagine anything should ever stand in your way, let alone a pathetic excuse for your firing. Hello, I'm going on an adventure starting with not having a job and living in an empty house all by myself that I can't afford. But I think it's okay.
The marvel is that it will be okay. I'm so used to panicking, so used to everything at once and noticing all of it - the raised tissue ache of the half-healing open wound in my mouth, probably caused by biting my cheek in my sleep. The awkward pressure on my pinkie, the uncomfortable fullness of unpopped cervical vertebrae, all of the textures and temperatures enveloping me. What I'm getting at is that I am usually intensely aware of myself in my environment and so I am generally intensely uncomfortable. Relaxing is... difficult.
But it feels okay. There's no panic. There's the empty space where the panic came and went and now it's just quiet.
So this is how I know that I will make it out alive and well on the other side of...it.
With regard to my recent birthday, I'd like to list some memories and events that would be nice to keep.
- Performing on stage in the Vagina Monologues (terrified)
- Maintaining a long distance relationship for nine months
- Nashville; Cheekwood. The slow unfurling of a day with no plans and the gradual realization that it was okay. The ambling, delicious pace of it all. The gentle companionship.
- Terrified and speaking to a class of high schoolers anyway
- Terrified and climbing the rock wall anyway
- Terrified and completing the high ropes course anyway (memorable: "Fuck it, let's do this shit," and throwing myself into empty air before I could properly grasp how terrified I was)
- No longer taking for granted the simple act of waking up slow next to someone you love
- Committee-membering the fuck out of an excellent event for women's reproductive health. Hanging lanterns from an oversize ladder (while being scared of heights), counter-protesting protestors while standing in four inch heels and grinning, welcoming guests over the idiot bleatings of anti-choice sad-sacks with megaphones.
- My first 5k; the exhilaration and pride. The incredible ease of stretching afterwards. My fastest mile and fastest three miles.
It was a good year, 25. A stretch year. It was a year for getting better at maintaining relationships, the year I learned that unless I put plans on my calendar, they won't happen. It was the year I learned that being terrified and doing it anyway is some of the best life advice I've ever taken, and that each time I'm slightly less terrified. It was a growth year, the year I figured out what the hell I wanted to do with my life and started to understand the depth of sacrifice I would have to make.
26 will be better yet, and has already proven so with its tumultuous beginning. In a few months I will meet one of my oldest and best friends for the first time in New York, a strange city, a lovely adventure that terrifies (duh, it's a theme) and thrills me. She loved me before I knew how to love myself, and loves me still.
And, well, hello, unemployed you soon. Hello, lover that might not be long distance soon. Hello, hello. It is all beautiful and I have so much anticipation for all of it, simply all of it is going to be brilliant and grand.
Posted via m.livejournal.com.