I am changing.
But the idea of me that I want to put out into the world isn’t.
Who I want to be and the parts of myself that I don’t like are conflicting.
I stand firm on foundations that feel crumbly at the fact my morals feel proud.
I worry that I think too much about what others think.
Other times I worry I don’t think enough about that at all.
I’m scared that if I’m honest about how I feel I’ll be met with judgement.
For no real reason, other than what I feel is anxiety.
My feelings have no solid ground, so of course they are easy to judge.
Does that really mean that they are judging me though?
By that logic, are my morals really mine or just my anxieties of what people will think?
The few things I used to take pride in being, I might not be anymore.
So who am I?
Will the people who loved me then, love me now?
Anxiety is a feral hungry beast.
Pacing and pattering through my veins.
Thumping and crashing in my heart like a misplaced 808.
“I’m really not an anxious person.”
Shakily fall from between my lips, reluctantly.
As I realise, I’m anxious to even admit that im anxious.
Am I supposed to have life figured out in my almost mid twenties?
Probably not.
Do I feel like I should have a vague sense of direction about it?
Maybe.
Although I’m battling with the idea that no one ever really knows what they want to do and people just get stuck.
So maybe I’m the lucky free thinker.
Or maybe I’m the delusional directionless unemployed rambler that people avoid at pubs.
Good job I avoid pubs.
I thought I was a powerful, political, before my time, feminist.
Who was just “too awake for the world before me”.
Miserable because my eyes are open too wide, that sort of thing.
Identifying as a realist.
But maybe, just maybe, I’m just a miserable old *******.
Creaky kneed, bleak thoughted.
I never used to think that much.
Well I did, I just never categorised myself as an overthinker.
I was wrong.
I just overthought about irrelevant things, out of my control.
Unimportant to spiral over.
Now that I and the people I love are centre to my anxious internal ramblings, i realise just how wrong.
I thought growing up would entail control of your mind.
Coping mechanisms.
Maybe growing up is realising coping is just getting on with it.
That prospect has never sat right with me.
“Queen of holding on to things” my mother often refers to me as.
Hoping to god I’ll learn to one day “park”, as she would say, just one of the things that make me miserable.
On any of the number of days I choose to let it pop back up.
Which would feel like everyday.
If you catch me on a “everything is bothering me day” I’d tell you I’m playing whack a mole with everything bad that’s ever happened in my life.
And although I know how it goes, I lose every time.
Maybe that’s because I’m so dedicated to my hobby.
Not a healthy one, I have none of those.
I’m referring to my insane ability to play basketball with chucking my feelings into my **** it bucket.
Until of course I realise that the **** it bucket isn’t looking so **** it anymore.
When you’ve felt so much for so long does contentness ever feel less like emptiness?
Does the peace ever get quieter?
Do the problems get realer or do we just stop creating them?
The questions I’d have asked myself a decade ago take a soul-wrenchingly, starkly, different tone.
So am I ungrateful?
Am I ungrateful that my biggest problem is anxiety?
My biggest problem is fake problems.
How 13 year old me would laugh in my face and spit venom with the tone.
I went through so much to get to where I am now.
To feel like I cheated?
Like I somehow don’t deserve it?
Not to say I earned it, but why would I deserve it less than anyone else?
I am aware.
I always have been.
I see the flaws in my thinking
The excruciatingly humane flaws in my self.
People fault me on seeing every one of their flaws, and pointing it out.
But how do I stop thinking them?
“Being aware is the first step.”
Yes.
Everyone finishes there.
Is there a second step?
Me and a few other million people are wondering.
Nothing else in life is like that.
You’re given an equation.
It’s explained, you get an answer.
It’s right, or it’s wrong.
Mentally we are left exhausting all the options.
Flaw after flaw, fault after fault, lapse after lapse.
For what?
No closer to answers just an opportunity to do it wrong differently next time.
Exhausted from thinking
The thoughts are chaotic like 5 point round abouts.
I am terrified to verbalise them.
I don’t know what I want.
Being heard isn’t enough anymore.
I don’t want solutions.
What are we left with?
Nothing practical.
Just a wish and a dream of one day feeling differently.
Being content with being content.
Accepting serenity as peace, not a moment to be ruined.
There is a paradise out there, I just haven’t met her and neither has anyone I know.
Does that make me sound like a believer?
Like actualisation is tiered with heaven?
As I get older, the more I realise that it just might be exactly that, for atheists.
Try as you might, I don’t believe it’s possible in life.
I’m upset that in my realism and internalised honesty, that I forced my brain to block out so much of my life.
I focused on the negative things and considered myself to be being true to history and my past.
Remembering is important.
Yes.
I wish I remembered the name of my favourite song on the dance mat.
Not how upset I was when I found out it had been thrown away.
I wish instead of getting so hung up on how people left, why people left or how terrible they are for leaving, that I remembered how good it was to know them.
I’m worried that my brain is not who I want it to be.
I’m scared that everything I hate in this word is an externalisation of everything I hate in myself.
I’m anxious that all of my darkest thoughts, are the truest testament to who I am as a person.