what i'm not saying.

Most days it’s not an act. People think that being the bubbly, happy girl is putting on a front, that nobody could be that peppy and optimistic. But usually, I just am. I can’t really explain it. I know that life is full of hardship and crummy situations, but for the most part I just don’t think about those things on a regular basis. Life is shiny and wonderful, meant to be enjoyed and lived. I absolutely cannot understand pessimism – why, if you have the option to think positively or negatively without knowing the outcome of something, would you possibly want to purposefully make yourself miserable? That’s what I see pessimism as, a willingness to be unhappy.

My day to day activities keep me occupied. I’m distracted with television shows, blogs to read, AIM conversations that make me laugh until I cry and e-mails about plans to see my friends that excite me. Whatever I’m doing, my mind is not on my problems.

The issue with this is that I’m unconsciously holding it all in. Everything that bothers me gets pushed to the side by my nature to be happy. It’s not something I force, not at all – sometimes I wish I could have my moment in the middle of the day in front of someone. But I don’t.

I don’t until it’s 2am, there’s nobody around, and I find myself falling down a vicious well of self-hatred. I crumple into a ball – in the shower, on my bed, just sitting on the floor – and I cry. I cry and cry, over everything and nothing. I cry because I’m sick, because everything I try seems not to work, because I’m afraid I’m never going to feel better ever again. I cry because I feel worthless – I disappoint everyone, whether it’s by canceling plans or simply the fact that I can’t get a job.

I cry because no matter how many friends or family members tell me I’m something special, that I have something amazing to offer the world, I just don’t believe them. I’m a living, walking definition of mediocrity – good at many things, but not great at anything. I desperately want to believe my friends, to see what they see, but something is there that stops me. That aspect of my life is a total farce. I’m able to tell people that I know I’m awesome, but it’s a cover-up.

Somewhere along the way, sometime in college, I lost the ability to believe in myself.

I could see that I was throwing away my college education by skipping class and never studying, but I was unable to stop myself. I couldn’t put the right pieces together and figure out how to utilize my time best and be productive. I knew - and was reminded ad nauseam by my parents - that I had the potential and the intelligence to succeed. It was something I should have been able to control, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t because of circumstance or outside influences – it was all me. And because I couldn’t do it, I lost confidence in my ability to do anything.

Around this time, I stopped dancing. Dance was the single solitary thing in my life that I was constantly good at. I could pick up choreography that girls had learned for months in one night. I could do pirouettes and a near-perfect switch leap; I could put on my game face for hip hop and bring elegance to lyrical dancing. It was something I worked terribly hard at, and I saw amazing results. If I couldn’t do something right the first time, I practiced until I did. I put passion into everything I did and because of it, I received handfuls of compliments from people I didn’t even know at the ends of recitals.

I’ve never known how to channel that effort into anything else and, once that part of my life was over, I had settled into mediocrity. That’s where I stay, almost stuck, unable to figure out how to get out.