Looking Back, Moving Forward

Looking back on my life and all of the pain and struggles I have faced, has made me realize that I should be thankful for where I am currently in my life.  While I may not have the life I imagined I would have by this point in my life, I believe that I have developed into a much better person than I was in the past.  Reading old posts has made me realize just how much I let my inner pain affect my life and my relationships.  I still let this pain impact my life on a daily basis.  It is a constant struggle I am working towards overcoming.  Too often I compare my life to that of others, and when mine doesn't measure up, I enter a place that is nothing other then detrimental.  One thing that I struggle with most is seeking validation for the things I do, and yearning for attention.  I often find myself getting upset at a lack of people to talk to, and often I get quite upset when people don't respond to my text messages or other means of communication.  With the knowledge that everyone constantly has their phone on them, it hurts when people don't feel the need to respond.  It sucks going days without talking to anyone, not telling anyone about what is going on in my life, not telling anyone the times when I get super depressed.  I know it is on me for not reaching out to those in my life when I need someone to talk to, because I know there are people in my life I can talk to during those times.  I just feel as if I have reached the max amount of times going to people for help.  I just feel like a burden asking for help all the time.  I think that is why I tend to bottle up my emotions.  It is easier than opening up about what I am struggling with.  I tend to not even admit to myself what I am feeling.  I tend to sweep my emotions under the rug and go about my daily life not being true to who I really am.  Who I am around other people is a version of who I am, I just am often too afraid to be the true version of me.  Mainly because I don't believe I have discovered who that person is yet.  So many times I catch myself saying stupid things that I don't mean, but once they are said, they can't be unsaid.  I also tend to hold back the things that I should say to people to cultivate relationships.  I think that part of me is afraid to get close to people because if I make myself vulnerable, I may find happiness.  A lot of times I feel like I don't deserve happiness.  That is the sucky part of depression, it makes you believe that you don't deserve to be happy or have love in your life.  I hate this inner battle I constantly have with myself.  The part of me that wants to be kind and outgoing and happy is always pushed down my the part of me that sees the world as harsh and evil.  It is much easier to hope and pray for an afterlife in which everyone goes to Heaven and works out all the pain and suffering of this life than it is to try during this life to make the world a better place.  Despite always being in emotional pain, I always yearn for others to be happy, even if it contributes to my unhappiness.  I don't want anyone to suffer the pain I suffer.  It kills me a little inside knowing that I am doing nothing to prevent others from being unhappy.  I don't know how to, likely because I don't know how to make myself happy.  I think it is time that I stop worrying so much about everyone else and worry about mending myself and figuring out who I am and who I want to be.  I have these ideas of what I want my life to be like: close friends, a loving husband, kids, pets and such.  But, living in a fantasy world brings nothing but pain.  Before I can have those things, I need to first learn how to be comfortable being alone.  I need to be comfortable living my life and doing things like traveling and experiencing things I want to experience, even if it means doing it alone.  I really haven't been living up to this point, I've been to afraid to.  It is so much easier to stay the same as I have always been.  I'm not a kid anymore, and I shouldn't be upset because my childhood is over and it wasn't what I wanted it to be.  I have my whole life ahead of me, and the only way I will enjoy it is if I stop looking towards the past and wishing, and instead focusing on the present and becoming the person I want to be.  I cannot wait to move back to Iowa at the end of July.  I ran away from my problems there, hoping I would find the life I wanted, only to realize my life there was better than it has been anywhere else.  I know things aren't the same there as when I left, but I am hoping to rekindle relationships that I nearly destroyed.  My life has always been in Iowa, and I hate that it has taken me so long to realize that.  I'm just glad I realized it now instead of 10 or 20 years from now.  I have no idea whether I will stay in Iowa for the rest of my life.  I have no idea what will happen next in my life.  I'm okay with that.  Too much of my life has been spent planning my future, a future that will never exist.  I am sick of planning.  I just want to experience life and let it progress as it is meant to.  If I stay in Iowa forever because I have close friends and family there, perfect.  If I end up moving somewhere else with a significant other, fantastic.  Whatever happens, I know that some of the worst parts of my life have past, and it is time to find the good in life.  If I never end up married and never have kids, so long as I am doing some small part to make the world a little bit better, that is fine by me.  I no longer believe that I need a romantic interest to fulfill my life.  As long as I am content with who I am as a person and have people in my life whom I love, that is enough.  If I am meant to end up with someone, I will.  I need to leave that to God and stop trying to control my own destiny.

I'm Not Alright

It amazes me how long it has been since I last looked at this blog.  Reading posts I have made makes me realize the pain I have felt, the loneliness, and the depression I constantly struggle to overcome.  Considering everything I have overcome, you would think that I would be immune to pain at this point in my life.  I'm about to graduate and should be mature enough to not let little things get to me.  But the truth is, I am just as unhappy now as I have always been.  I have just learned to suppress it enough that even I don't realize I'm not content with life.  I feel as if I have created a fake persona for myself, and I struggle so much with knowing who I truly am.  I catch myself saying things, and I can't believe the words are coming from my mouth because it is so far from who I used to be.  Maybe it is just the fact that I am changing as I age that I am having such a difficult time coming to terms with.  I used to have this picture in my mind of how my college experience would be like.  I intended to get super fit and attractive and attract the "popular" group as my friends.  I figured that I would make life-long friends in college and that it would be the best years of my life.  The truth is, college has been some of the worst years of my life.  Being so far away from my true friends and family and being so poor that I can never afford to go back has been a major struggle.  I haven't made the friendships in college I had hoped to.  I made friends at JBU, but I've lost touch with all of them.  They are strangers to me now.  It is crazy how someone can go from being your best friend, to being a complete stranger.  I don't have a college best friend anymore.  A majority of the time when I need to talk to someone, there really isn't anyone around to talk to.  I don't want to burden anyone with my unhappiness.  There are so many times when I wonder what purpose my life serves.  To be honest, a lot of days I wonder why I should continue living.  Part of me realizes that if I were gone, there would be people who would be sad and would miss me.  Though, I never see those people anyways.  I feel like such a burden bringing up my issues to people that I hardly talk to anymore.  Plus part of me is scared to let anybody in because I have been hurt so badly by my best friends in the past.  I just wish forgiveness were easier and we could just fix things.  I just don't know how to develop relationships anymore.  I don't know who I am, and I have no idea what I want out of life.  I wish people understood depression better.  I try to fight through it every day, but deep down inside I am numb.  I don't know what my hobbies are, or if I have any.  I spend as much time as I can sleeping, listening to music, and watching Netflix because all of these things create an escape from my life and drown out my thoughts.  For so long I have been avoiding feeling anything.  I'm afraid that I've been broken beyond repair.  A year ago I used to be so much peppier and I had so much more confidence in myself.  Now every time I look in the mirror or see a photo of myself, I am repulsed.  I don't see the person I used to be, and I don't recognize the person looking back at me.  I have no idea how to bring that person back.  I don't even know if that person was ever me.  What if being depressed is who I am and any other person I may appear to be is just a facade?  I don't know how to be happy or content with life.  I don't know how to stop myself from envying other people who have two parents who care about them and have always been there.  I don't know how to not be envious of people who have nice things and don't have to take out a payday loan just to be able to do things for my 21st birthday.  Simply, I don't know how to love others because I don't know how to love myself.  I've always thought that I just needed a guy to come along to love me and then life would be better.  But from what everyone says, nobody can love me until I love myself.  This just makes me fear that nobody will ever love me because I don't know if I will ever be able to love myself.  It isn't that I don't want to, I just don't know how.  The things I think I want to do, I am too afraid to do because I hate doing things alone.  I hate being left alone and stuck fighting off negative thoughts.  I have no idea what to do with my life.  I have no idea if I want to move back to Iowa or if I want to travel and move somewhere new.  I just want to be somewhere where I can learn to like myself and enjoy life.  I don't want to keep feeling so alone.  I don't know if it is strength or weakness that keeps me going every day.  Because to be completely honest, on my 20th birthday I told myself that I had a year for my life to improve or I would kill myself.  My life is not any better now than it was then.  But I don't want to kill myself.  I want to have a better life.  I want to be a better person.  I want to build friendships and find a guy to spend my life with.  I want to have children one day.  There are so many things I want out of life, I just don't know how to make them happen.  My biggest fear is that they won't happen and I will wake up one day realizing I am old and still completely miserable and still feel alone.  For now, I'm not alright, and I need to learn how to live with that until I know how to change it.  Maybe I will never be alright, but I at least want to keep trying to be.  I deserve to find love and happiness in life.  I'll either find it, or die trying.