This song has been my inspiration for the past few days. Making small changes here and there, hoping things will get better. Cut my hair, dyed my locks, wore a dress out, enjoyed a night with some old friends, essentially worry free. I'm hoping that by taking little steps, I won't learn to forget, but learn to live again.
A friend told me a few days ago that I'm completely different than when he remembers meeting me. I'm pretty much dead, too deep in depression to care about anything anymore, or to see what everyone else sees. I do not deny these observations. They're actually more true than even he realizes. But he did not win that battle that night. My stubbornness prevailed, as always.
You see, he believes that we have the power to change ourselves through a free will that was given to us somehow, by some thing. I don't believe a word of that, but I let him give his argument. This kid claims to have beat a three year long depression simply by choosing not to be depressed anymore and claims I can do the same. I don't.
I'll probably never be able to explain it properly, but pain and suffering are the majority of what I know, what I cling to, what I believe has made me into the person that I am. Without my past, without all the pain, frustration, and sadness, I would be a completely different person; and, believe it or not, I actually do like who I am (as a person [mostly]). I'm even doubting the medication and going back to counseling because I like being fucked up again. I enjoy having small secrets, having something that is purely my own, that no one else holds claim to, has a stake in, or shares with me. This, exactly how I am right at this moment, is the one normalcy that I know. It's my alternative to the other normalcy that I cannot have. I have always been a person of extremes: overjoyed or miserably depressed, madly in love or deeply heartbroken, well fed or starving, high on life or high on anxiety. I've been told that it's possible to have a mix, that living in the in-between of all those extremes is a good, healthy, enjoyable way to live life. I'm not totally convinced. I'm also afraid of change; deathly terrified, which is partially why I'm starting this blog.
Change, I'm starting to learn, is the only constant, reliable thing in life. Things change all the time, every day. The leaves on the trees, the people around you from day to day, year to year, even the skin on your bones isn't the same as it was a few minutes ago, let alone from when you were born. Change, no matter how much I fight it, is a part of life, and there's nothing I can do about that. Nothing but embrace it. So that's what I'm going to do.
This blog seeks to document the changes in my life over the next year, my senior year of college--what is supposedly the defining year of my life. The year I make a final career choice (that will last the rest of my young adult life), the year before I become a responsibility-wielding adult in the eyes of the world. Am I ready for it? Who knows. I certainly thought I was ready for the real, grown-up world that I saw in my future a few months ago. And I still feel, if the circumstances were proper, that I am ready for all that. But that's the past now, something that changed unexpectedly. Regardless, this year I'm going to attempt to take control of my life (for once [instead of trying to control everyone else's]).
My goal is to make one small change in my life each day (probably starting out each week or fortnight) and see what comes of it. Some of the changes will be small and seem rather insignificant, others will be large and probably seem quite brash. Through all of this I'm hoping to find myself, or a part of myself, or just figure something out about my life and where I've been, where I am, and the general direction of where I'm heading. I want to take chances, learn to live a little bit, and be more open, with myself and to the world. I want to make good choices, make terrible mistakes, do super well and extremely awesome and be quite miserable and out of it. (Got that latter part mostly covered.) I want to challenge myself to break out of my shell, become the person I always saw myself as, and be a person people enjoy being around (for the most part). On the other hand, I also wouldn't mind an attempt at being the terrible, awful, rude, inconsiderate, bitch of a person I could be, if I let myself. The goal is to try everything out, try on every mask, every style, every way of living, and see which one works best for me (not you). Do I really want to be destructive and make bad choices forever? Do I want to be the good, nice, sweet, loving girl that everyone expects me to be? Do I wanna be a heart breaking slut or someone who never goes on a single date?
I know what I am now (for the most part) and what I am capable of becoming, if I choose to let myself. Let's see what I choose to do.
Post Script
I talk a lot about choice in this first entry. For those of you who don't know me, choice is something I have struggled with in varying degrees for a very long time. It takes me literally hours to figure out what I want to eat, if I want to spend money and go out, or make something at home, if I do go out where I'd like to go, what I'd like to order, etc. As you can see simply from that sentence, it's a very drawn out mental process.
A lot of you don't really know what goes on in my mind, the insanity that I keep bottled up. For those of you who do not wish to know some of my inner workings, I ask that this be your first and last visit to this blog. There's a chance some of this content may become explicit (probably not too much so, since I tend to keep that to my personal, written journals) and I do not want to offend anyone. I say this, but I know it's going to happen. Normally, I would apologize in advance to those whom I may offend, but I'm through apologizing to people for no good reason. I have nothing to apologize for. This is your warning; take it as you will.
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