(no subject)
These are things I'm scared of. They, lately, are incessantly consuming my thoughts. I lose sleep over them, I panic over them, and I can't get things done over them. And I just need to talk them out, to expel them from my mind and my body and my words that form on the tongue, I can't talk about them because they will be real. But here they are, and I cope I can trap them here, forever encased and hope that no pandora will break them open.
No hiding from it, no watching my words. This is the truth, this is it. And God I hope these thoughts end here.
I am not good enough. I just am not. I worry about this everyday. I have papers upon papers piling up, I used to pride myself on being able to write a paper in one large sitting and producing good, quality work. The thoughts used to come more easily, and I stressed less.
And now I try, try so hard, work on writing everyday and nothing worthy comes out. I overthink everything, letting words flow isn't good enough anymore. I write and erase and write and erase and then I finally, finally form something, I love. and then others better than me read it and tear it, rip it, and with it goes my confidence as a writer.
And I have the audacity to apply for graduate school? I dare try to convince people that I'm good enough, belong there, when I am not even sure myself? I have to forumlate the best prose I have ever conceived when I lost so many of the words from my head, from my fingers, fron my tongue. I try to speak them but they've run away, and I don't know where they've gone.
I want to go so badly. I want to go back to someplace I felt so at home, even in just a short six months. It's only three-thousand miles away and it feels like three trips around the world. It's there but the red tape pulls me back. Graduate school seems like my answer -
and somedays I wake up and I say, "I can do this. I love these programs, and they are my subject, they are my field, and I c a n d o t h i s." And then others I wake up and I've dreamt, again, that I failed miserably and I was not good and these thoughts come over and over and over again.
What if I leave, and I have found that I don't have a home there anymore?
What if I don't go, and lose the guy whom I love so much? What if I don't go and it's the worst mistake I've made?
What if going is the worst mistake I'll make because I wasn't ready? I am just-turned twenty-one and feel like I'm seventeen again.
I never believed in mistakes. I believed in fate, in one foot before the other. And then I had a birthday and realized that I always make the worst choices - that my choices, often, are just wrong.
I fear that I am not what I used to be.
I am terrified that I'll keep looking under the couch and behind my bed and in my closet for the words and they'll actually be in the attic and I'll be too scared to go up and check.
I hate that I complain all the time about not fitting in at Catholic, that it was the wrong school for me; and I hate even more, and fear even more, that I just won't fit in anywhere.
I miss pat even though I shouldn't; I regret even though I shouldn't; I miss the good times often at the expense of enjoying myself presently.
I constantly mix up letters when I write, I write words backwards, and I keep forgetting words I used to use frequently in both writing and language. I worry everyday that I am just not as intelligent as I should be. I don't learn quickly, I have no short-term memory, and I've increasingly become inarticulate when I speak.
I feel as though I am at the age that I should be comfortable with all these aspects and yet, for me, they only keep getting worse.
Simply put: what if I try and try my hardest, and no matter what, my best just isn't good enough?
And now I breathe out - a giant breath of fresh air.