I don't want to trick myself into thinking that leaving will solve my problems.

Because I know if I allow myself to think that way, I could potentially approach all future struggles the same way...by leaving.

So what makes me think that leaving will solve this problem?  Well, I have a few reasons.  But getting away - in a more permanent manner - just needs to happen.

It's time to leave when you feel stifled.  When every day you feel more and more like you're dying on the inside.  When you continue to fall into the shadows and forget who you were.  When you can't seem to escape the distant hope that you'll run into them.

It's time for change.  As much as I hate it.  But maybe leaving will kick my butt in gear and I'll finally start working towards those career goals I have.  If I can get answers to what's going on in my body, that is.  Because that is a major part of it.

And I hate it.

I hate being out of control.  I hate not knowing what the fuck is going on in my life.  Why I had to make plans, get excited about my future, and then everything had to go to hell because my body started malfunctioning, and left me with no answers, no direction, and no future.  If that's some kind of sick joke to get me to give up my hopes and dreams, I'm really laughing over here.

Sorry.

Everything has become a torrential downpour in the past year, and I am sick of life.  I'm sick of not knowing, I'm sick of feeling sick, I'm sick of being hung up on someone I knew things would never work out with anyway.  I'm sick of feeling exhausted all the time, of not loving what I do at work, of having no passion, no hope, no nothing for anything in life.

What the hell happened.

I am tired and weary and there is no hope.  There is no desire, no want, not even a smidgen of care for doing the right thing.  Or believing the right thing.  Or following the right Thing.

...

I have given up.

And am somehow okay with that.  Which if there was even a glimmer of anything good and right left in me, I know I wouldn't be okay with that.  I know I would be struggling with wanting to do the right thing but finding myself unable to do it.

But here I am.  Knowing - always knowing - what the right thing to do, or say, or believe is, and yet I don't.  I don't care.  I don't have enough energy or willpower to care, and I don't care that I don't care about that.

So there.

What am I even doing.  Why am I still here?  Why didn't I just go for things back when I started to plan them?  Why did I have to hope and stick around and watch my life go to shit?
Would it have been better for it all to go wrong somewhere else?  Somewhere where I would have been far from home and from family?  Would that have made things worse?
Who even knows.

What I want to know is why I'm so hung up on you.
Seriously.
Why the fuck can I not just get over you?  Move on and find someone else?
Is it the lack of intelligent and attractive people here?  Something else?
I'm not stupid; I don't believe in that "soulmate" crap.  But my inability to let you go is almost convincing enough to make me think that - were things different - we were meant to be together.

Or maybe I would begin to hate you the more I got to know you.

Whatever.

All I know is that I'm counting down the days when I'm out of this miserable place, away from you, and maybe...just maybe, I can find some peace of mind.

...As if.

Good Intentions

Good intentions are only ever that - good intentions.

Unless they're turned into meaningful, authentic actions.  Then they become infinitely more significant.  And you become a better person for following through.

But what happens if your good intentions turned actions cease because the situation or circumstance changes?  Were you ever sincere in those actions or were you merely acting out of the desire for selfish gain?  Were your prayers for that person sincere or were they spoken for hopes of making things "right" in case they ever worked in your favour?

Do I even have a point in asking all these questions?

Probably not.

I can't remember the last time my insides were so full of thoughts and words and poetry that if I didn't type them out I would feel as if I was going to burst.

I can't remember the last time any of the words I did write hold an undertone of hope and light and life.

I imagine that is probably because I myself have felt so hopeless for so long.

And then I find myself [stupidly] up late at night, browsing social media, and checking up on Adam Young's instagram account.  Doing so reminds me why I try to avoid following him on social media because the last time I did that - several years ago - I found myself falling for his stupid (in the most affectionate way) face...just like every other female on the planet.

How.  Cliché.

But it also reminds me of how much his faith inspires my own (or major lackthereof, currently).  And how his words bring so much hope and light and life to those who read them.  And how his dumb, crazy good music makes me want to fall in love when I listen to it.  (Something I desperately try to fight against as much as possible.)

I try to avoid thinking too much these days, because the end result is always a downward spiral due to life [seemingly] having no direction, no answers, no nothing.  And I don't need to be any more sad than I already am.  Much less be reminded of how out-of-whack my body is and how I have no solutions to get better since we don't even know what's wrong.

(Though that recently changed!!)

I wish I could write words that...impacted.  Not inspire, not spur action, not call for bravery.  Rather, words that are raw and bleeding with honesty, with the harsh realities of life, painting pictures with the dark and dull colours that real life is accompanied by.  But also words that, in the end, speak softly of hope, healing with obvious love, a seranade of warm and vibrant colours that dance and serve as a reminder that life is something worth celebrating.

Am I good with words?

Do they hit home?

Am I - above all else - honest in what I write?

I try to be.

There is absolutely no point, no benefit, to pretending life is all sunshine and kittens when life is actually happening.  No one singular individual's life is ever perfect or flawless or anything lacking in struggles that they may portray it to be.

I suppose I could be a bit too honest at times; but I'd rather be that and admit that I'm struggling, admit that I don't know, rather than let pride get the better of me.

What is the point of all of this?

I have no idea.

I guess I'm just writing for the sake of writing because finally, after so long, I can't fall asleep until these words are out of me.

Does that make them worthy of using your time to read them?

Hardly.

I still need time to heal, to mend, to figure things out.  I am so lost, so weary and tired and broken, and I don't even know where to start to begin to heal.  Okay, well maybe I do know where to start, but you have to want to get better first, and I'm not quite there yet.

I am, however, looking into getting help to get to the place where I will care enough about things to want to change and get better.

Everything is still a mess, still a puzzle, but that's okay.  I am taking life one day at a time.  I have friends and family who care enough for me to pray for me when I cannot pray for myself.

And I have, I know (though I can't seem to see it for myself), hope.  That life will work out, that health will return, that plans will continue.  It may not be in the ways I expect it to, or want it to, but it will.

There is hope.

There is always hope.

You Again

I dreamed about you again last night.


And now I'm sitting here wondering what it was I did, that would make you invade my dreams.

Have I not thought about you enough?  Have I not fully grieved over what will never be?  Have I not yet let you go?

I guess not.

Why else would you haunt my thoughts day and night?  Why else would my heart begin to beat faster when I think I hear your voice?  Why else would my heart hurt a little bit more when I see pictures of her with you?

We all want what we can't have.

I guess I don't know how to grieve.
I suppose I don't even know what I'm supposed to be grieving.

Is is lack of closure?  Not ever knowing what might have come to be if I wasn't so stupidly oblivious? Thinking I might have had a chance, but now not ever being able to know?

Perhaps I have regrets.
Perhaps I wish I would have heard the undertones in what you said to me.
Perhaps I was a little bit in love with you.

Maybe the things I do now are for you.  In a way, at least.  Being reckless, doing things I wouldn't have ever thought I'd do before, hoping that if you see, if you hear, you'll realise.

(It's like sixth grade all over again.)
(Ugh.)

There's a 100% chance you won't see this.
And that's okay.
Because this is for me, not for you.
This is me screaming out into the void wishing I could change time.
Wishing I could change myself.
Wishing I could change you.

All for the better.

But what is better?
You're happy now.
I know.
I heard you laugh.

And I'm happy you're happy.
Truly.

I guess I only wish you were happy with me.


And, I guess, that will never be.

Okay.
Deep breath.

I will be okay.
I will be okay.
I will be okay.

If I repeat it enough, it'll come true.


...right?

So is this how it's supposed to be?

A continuous stream of up and down and up and down; thinking I'm fine and doing better, that I'm finally over you, only to find myself thinking about you too much and wishing things were different.  That you had followed the right path, that we had met at a different time, that perhaps we wouldn't have met at all.  At least then I wouldn't be feeling like this.

We clicked so easily.  More so than I had ever done with any guy before, and on so many levels.  You were intelligent, you quoted poetry to me, you suggested an outing (which I very stupidly turned down because I don't get hints)....  We bantered back and forth, I made you laugh, made you look forward to the days when we saw each other (I looked forward to them as well)...

I knew we would never work out.  But I allowed myself to hope.  I allowed myself to pray and see if this was a thing that could happen.  I kept meeting with you, learning more about you and your past, falling in love with you.

At least, I think it was love.
At the very least, I cared for you very, very deeply.

You made me want things I never wanted before, never even cared about up until I met you.  Things like actually being in a relationship.  The potential for marriage.  Heck, even the potential of starting a family with you.  (And for anyone who knows me, that's big.)

And then one day, months after meeting you, you said the word "girlfriend" in a passing sentence, and I went into emotional shock.  I stopped hearing what you continued to say.  I felt like a part of me had shattered.

And that's when I knew I shouldn't have ever let myself entertain the idea of being with you.

Once upon a time a friend in high school told me that we can't control who we fall in love with.  I disagreed with her then, and I still do.  I am an expert at controlling emotions and suffocating them until they cease to exist.  They waste my time and energy, and I usually have no need for these superfluous things.

I could have controlled what I felt for you.
I could have forced myself to not care, to not think about you, to not explore the potential.
But I didn't.
And I still don't know if I hate myself for growing to care for you or not.

So now I'm back to where I was before I met you, but at the same time, I'm not.  Because, you see, before I was all about never wanting to be with someone, not giving the time of day to thinking about how someone out there could make me feel the things you made me feel.  But oops, you came along, and my perspective changed.  I am now aware that, perhaps, someone out there will be as intelligent and clever and charming as you, and will make me feel those things again.

So while I have reverted to having no desire to be with someone, to be married, and to definitely never ever have children, I know that could change.  I know my heart could be won by someone.  I know that I could once again find myself taking long walks, listening to music that makes the world seem vivacious, and thinking about how much I love you him.

Someday, perhaps.
Or perhaps not.

For now, I will try to let you go.
Because you were never mine.
And I know you never will be.

But...thank you.
For making me aware that there is potential for change in the future.  That intelligent, spellbinding men exist in the world.  For, I suppose, helping me learn (to a certain degree) what it looks like to care deeply for someone.  What it feels like to want a future with someone.

You have my deepest sincerity in wishing you every bit of happiness.
Truly.

Clouds and clouds and more clouds.
That's the price I pay for living in a place I love.  The mountains and the redwoods and the ocean are worth it, but sometimes the lack of sunshine for weeks on end gets to me.  And I forget even more what it means to be happy.

I can't sit and do nothing, because it makes me feel unproductive and lazy and like I did nothing on my days off from work.  But then if I do too much, I feel as though my weekend was not nearly long enough and regret having to go back to work.  And either way I feel just as exhausted, just as tired, just as weary.

How did I get to this place?

You know when something that's wrong or not-normal has been going on for so long, that it feels like the new normal, and you forget what the real normal feels like?  That's what this is.  I can't remember the last time I felt energised or completely rested and actually not. tired.  Or even when I cared about things...when I cared about life.  (Okay, that last one isn't so far away that I can't remember it.  I do.  And it hurts, so I try not to think about it.)

I applaud the people who go through their lives with health problems and push forward.  Who don't give up.  Who stay positive.  Because I am not one of them.  I feel as though I've been smashed to thousands of pieces and I cannot keep it together.  I laugh louder, make jokes left and right, and smile a lot.

(It's funny how we sometimes act completely opposite of how we feel.)

I don't feel funny, I don't feel like laughing, I don't feel like living.  I want to give up, and more often than not these days, I have to talk myself out of thinking too much about ways to die.  What a laugh.

How do people not give up?  How do they decide what to do when there is no direction?  I can't keep going back to the same doctor(s), because they have been no help in the past.  But I don't know what else to do.  Keep going back until I make them see that this is a legitimate issue and we need to figure it out?  I thought people got into the medical field because they wanted to help people.  And I understand that the human body is super complex and one person can't possibly know every little thing about it, but good God, you think they would have an idea of what to do for concerning issues.

I just want to die.

Isolation.  Giving up on people, on friendships, on everything.  On faith.

How do you tell the people in your life that while you know God is real, you've given up on trying anymore?  How would they react?  They certainly couldn't help, that's for certain.  And heaven forbid you tell your family members, because you know what some of their mindsets are, and they certainly wouldn't understand.

Please believe me when I say I don't want to give up, but trying to fight, to believe seems too great of a task.  This isn't a book, this isn't a game or a movie, and the answer isn't going to magically appear after a long time of struggling with no hope.

No hope.

I have to stay busy, stay distracted, in order to keep from thinking too much.  From being too sad, too disheartened, and wanting to end all of this.  Because that is on the forefront of my mind on a daily basis.

Perhaps I should look into getting pills to help with the sadness.  But I don't want to.  For reasons, of course, that I can't explain, because I myself do not know.

I don't know.

I don't know anything anymore.

What is even the point of this post?

Well, when you figure it out, let me know.

Because I'm just as much in the dark as you are.

Happy?? New Year

And so, just like that, the first day of the New Year has come to a close.

It was uneventful, and for that, I am glad.

This post isn't to reflect or reminisce about 2015; truth be told, I'm glad that year is behind me.  I didn't have any high expectations for it, but by the end, I felt weathered and broken and ready to say "to hell with you" to it.  How could something start out so seemingly wonderful, everything looking bright, having steps planned and expecting things to be solved, only to come crashing down so spectacularly?

I really couldn't tell you.

This post also isn't about what my plans are for 2016, or what hopes I have, what dreams I'd like to see fulfilled; truth be told, I have absolutely no expectations for this year.  In my little land of logic, I think not having any expectations means I won't be let down when things don't happen the way I thought they would.

A sad way to live, you think?
Perhaps.
But I'd rather face this year feeling blank in every sense of the word, rather than be crushed to a fine powder when everything falls through.

If you're wondering "What happened to her?" I'd like to join you in pondering that question.  Because I myself do not know.  I feel like 2015 took me as a rough-edged, jagged rock and threw me in the tumbler - but instead of coming out smooth, I exited broken into millions of tiny pieces.  Or maybe I'm still in the smoothing process.  Who knows.

Last year felt so...busy.  Hectic.  Crazy.  Good - at first - and then it plummeted downhill and kept going after the first five months had passed.

It was busy.  I was trying to get health things sorted (only more problems have sprung up, and what problems that I started out with still aren't fixed), I had a five-year plan (I don't even know if that will end up like I was hoping it would), and perhaps...just perhaps...I had fallen in love for the first time in my life.  Or, at least, what I thought was love.

(Who can know what a thing looks or feels like if one has never seen or felt it before?)

Hopes, baited-breath, slight promises?  Now there are none of those things.  I am empty, I am weary, I am tired, and I am losing strength in the fight for the desire or will to live.

What a great way to start out the year, huh?

I don't know what my future holds.  I think I've stopped caring what it holds.  Caring about anything, really.

I want to be honest.  Because my life isn't all adventure and romantic and dreamy; and I try not to portray is as such.  It's raw, it's nights of endless tossing and turning due to sadness or restlessness or some horrible combination of both.  It's frustration and anger and lack of control and wanting to push everyone away but knowing doing so wouldn't be fair to my friends (though I still do it sometimes because it's better they aren't around me when my loss of hope could be so venomous).

The past couple of months have been a struggle.  A struggle to trust, to hope, to keep faith.  Not doubting that God is real, certainly, but doubting as to whether or not I want to put effort into this relationship I have with Him.  (Which, currently, isn't a whole awful lot.)  Do I dare give up something I've claimed to believe my whole life?  Do I give up trusting that He knows what He's doing?  That He will bring about my healing, one way or the other, at some point?

I am tired of trying.  I am tired of having no answers, no direction, no glimmer of the next step that may come.  I want to give up, I want to stop hoping...essentially, I want to die.

I can say this, and people will give me different reactions.  Some say I don't mean what I say, others say they're sorry and it'll get better, others still don't really react, probably because they don't really know how to respond.  Which is okay.

It is okay that we don't have a response for everything.
Why should we be sorry about that?

I don't know where this post is going.  What purpose it serves.  Maybe I just need to get my thoughts out, to hear the friendly, familiar sound of my fingers tapping away on the keys...it's been a long time since I've heard this comforting sound.

Last year I tried to be more present in my life, and what was in front of my face.  I tried to be more intent in my relationships.  It was good, I suppose.  Made a difference?  The jury is still out on that.

I don't know what I want this year.  Apart from things that are labeled as "wrong."  Mainly, completely shutting out my family and abandoning my friends.  But I won't do that.  (Yet.)

I need space.  I need to not be pushed.  I need people to say "I understand" even if they don't (because most of them won't).

Actually...I don't know what I need.