Almost Everything

 Just a little light listening to go along with my mood. Hello again. I have opened up this site and stared at a blank screen more times in this past year than I even want to admit. Since January, I was desperately searching for a way to say what I had been feeling. To vocalize the weight that had been on me. To quote Amanda, it felt like "a fat man was sitting on my chest all the time." And that's exactly how I had been feeling. Overwhelmed. Uncertain. Pushing myself so hard to be the girl that my surroundings told me that I should be. Convincing everyone that I was happy. I was building a future. Or in my mind I was. The funny thing is, I was building a future that I never once could picture myself in. I tried so hard. So so hard. But my mind would never put me in that place. I was doing everything that everyone around me said that I needed for a happy life. I was planning a future that was calm and settled. A future for a girl that I know I wouldn't recognize. And then it all came to a halt. Everything got shaken up. Everything that I thought that I had such a strong and firm control over gave me a swift kick in the ass and reminded me that I'm not always in control. And I forgot that the only thing that I can control is how I feel. And how I react. And I lost control of myself. I lost control of my emotions. I felt like I lost control of my life. And I let that impact me. Hard. I let myself become this person that I didn't recognize. That I didn't like looking at in the mirror. I stopped answering phone calls. I went to work, I came home. I did school work (pulled a 4.0 in my first mini-mester though ayyyye) and went to work. I laid in my bed and wallowed in my pity and acted like I was the first person to ever be in this position. I blamed everyone but myself. And then I blamed myself. I really blamed myself. I let words that someone had said to me get into my head and I let them convince me that I was a lesser person. I wasn't someone worthy of friendship or having fun or being happy. I put myself into a dark place all because I let myself lose control. I self medicated and I took 1 step forward and about 15 steps back. I was going nowhere and I wasn't allowing myself to go anywhere.
This weekend, I had concert tickets to go to a show that Amanda and I had planned on going to forever. So I pulled myself out of bed and I drove to Atlanta. And for the first time in about eight months, I could breathe. I walked into an apartment full of people who genuinely care about me. Friends who I picked up with even after not talking to them for months. Friends who looked at me and said "You lost weight, you need to put some of it back on." Friends who asked how I was and genuinely cared about the response. As I sat on a sidewalk in Buckhead eating a meatball sub at 2 AM (long story) I realized that THIS is who I was supposed to be. This was a future that I could see myself in. The same future that 10 year old me pictured when we drove through the city. The same future that I was working on building before I moved home from Florida. I woke up Saturday morning to texts that would have sent me into an anxiety attack just a few days before. But I was fine. I could breathe. I cleared out my messages, got up, and went to brunch with my best friend. And it was there, sitting in that restaurant that I realized that I would, in fact, "have a nice life." I watched people walk down the sidewalk in midtown. I looked at the people around me. I had a real conversation about the future and I could breathe. I looked at all of these different people and I felt okay. I felt at home. I didn't feel like I was drowning. I understood. I had to try to become a person that I wasn't and I had to get hurt to realize that I never would have lived the life that I had envisioned for my younger self. I would have lived a life that I was content with, sure. But would it have been anything that I was proud of? I was 21 years old and terrified that nothing that I was going to do for the rest of my life would beat what i've already done. And I'm too young to be having that thought. So I picked myself up. I drank my mimosa. And I let that sh*t go.
Have I said and done things in the past month that I regret? Absolutely. Did I become a person that I didn't recognize? Yes. Yes times a thousand. Am I angry at anyone? No. I am so incredibly thankful for the patience that so many people have shown me while I've been trying to find myself, even when I didn't deserve it. Especially when I didn't deserve it.
So I guess the moral of this is, don't compromise yourself. Ever. Don't do something that you're not sure about. Because even though it may be good, it will kick you in the tail if it's not meant for you. And you know better than anyone what's good for you and what's not. You can save yourself so, so much pain.
And I guess that's that for now. Hopefully it wont be a year before I talk to you again. But if it is, cheers to the next year.