Living at Home.

Sometimes, my friends tell me all of the reasons I should be happy I'm still living at home. Mainly, that I'm saving money and that trumps everything else. Except it doesn't.

A few weeks ago, I decided I was going to take a seasonal retail job at the mall where one of Erik's friends works. My part-time job is ending as soon as I finish this last set of work and I haven't had much luck starting my hunt for a new full-time job. It seemed like a good transition from one part-time source of income into another.

I was happy with my decision and thought I was being smart. Yes, I might be a little better off job searching "full-time" after my 9-to-5 and making sure I snag a new job, but I figured I could pick up some extra cash for a few months while also pursuing that goal.

Well, tonight I discussed it at family dinner, because on Thursdays my brother comes home to visit. My brother immediately bashed my entire decision, saying that working in this particular store is degrading and stupid and not worth the money. My dad chimed in about how I have to take this job seriously and actually show up because I know the person who hired me. My mom - who already knew - stayed silent, which is her way of saying she doesn't think it's a good idea but she knows a lot better than to voice that opinion.

This is why I can't stay at home anymore. My family means well, I understand. They know I'm intelligent and can do great things, so they struggle when I'm not meeting their "successful life" expectations. I've had some hiccups in my life thus far and am trying to navigate them the best that I can. Instead of support, I receive negativity, lack of confidence, and silence.

Sometimes I wonder if they'll ever be happy. Not because I want to make them happy, but because I'm curious, as it seems impossible to please them. Even if I was doing what they think is best, there would just be something else that would come into focus as something I was doing wrong.

Being here and being criticized is not worth it. I would much rather "throw my money away" on an apartment to live with Erik who literally has never breathed a single negative word about anything I've decided to do or not do. My peace of mind is far more important than any amount of money I would save.

Inside My Head.

If you ever got inside my head, you would probably think I was insane.

Let me explain.

One of the weirdest things I do is go to two extremes when I feel like life is too tough for me. The first is that I think, okay, I’m going to act so totally miserable that everyone around me is going to feel sorry for me and realize how awful my life is. I plan on ignoring all texts (even though I don’t get too many other than from Erik), e-mails, or any other form of communication. I vow to stay off of Facebook and Twitter, become sullen and boring, and go to bed early all the time.

I’ve actually done the early-to-bed thing – and made a point of texting Erik at 8:30pm saying I was going to bed – but that’s the extent of it.

The opposite is that I decide I’m going to be so incredibly chipper and completely fake that it'll be obvious my life is in shambles. I picture friends asking me how’s life, how’s your job, and my answer being such a buoyant “EVERYTHING’S FABULOUS” that they’ll just know I’m faking it and that I’m actually miserable.

As you can see, I place a ton of importance on how people react to me. It’s the worst because I know, deep down in my brain and heart, that I need to make myself happy and do what’s best for me.

The problem, I believe, stems mainly from my parents for a myriad of reasons. Mainly, they always try to push me into things they think are best (when they’re not) and whenever I’m not up to snuff, I get shit for it. In retaliation, therefore, when I’m really unhappy, I want them to see and recognize it. They never do and probably never will, especially because they have an attitude of life’s supposed to be miserable, suck it up.

This post is kind of all over the place, but I’ve recently been in this mindset a lot with my new job. I’ve hatched grand plans to come home, eat dinner, and go straight to bed every night, to ignore Erik’s texts all day because I really shouldn’t be on my phone, and to cancel all weekend plans because it’s my only ‘me’ time. Or, oppositely, I want to do ALL OF THE THINGS and act super fake-happy and burn myself out so everyone will see how wrong it is for me.

That last sentence is really messed up; I shouldn’t have to prove to anyone that this isn’t right for me. And yet, I feel that I have to. I feel like if I don’t do one of those things and just quit my job out of blue… even though I would know it was the right thing, my family (and most likely my boyfriend) would think it was laziness and that I’m a quitter. They've already expressed a sentiment of 'why can't you just tough it out?' or 'stick with it for a year then quit.' A year is too long for me to stay where I am.

It's really awful to feel like I have no authority in my life, or at least that my decisions are always going to be questioned and scrutinized. When my boyfriend and parents can't just trust me when I say I'm unhappy here, I want to quit, I need to quit, it makes me sad.

Real Feelings on Work.

Sundays are the worst.

Monday mornings are a close second. The alarm goes off and I really want to hit snooze five more times. I already sleep as late as possible - up until a half-hour before I have to leave - and I still want more. But once I'm up and going, it's fine.

The drive isn't terrible, though I could do without the bathroom stops considering it's only a half-hour commute. As soon as I step into the office and settle in, I get through my day. Morning reports, finishing up yesterday's mail, filing papers. Suddenly it's lunch time, the mail comes in for the day, and I code and enter everything. I count the hours until 5:30.

But after a weekend of sleeping late, spending time with friends and Erik, and having a reprieve from my schedule, the hours go too quickly on Sunday night. As I clean up my room and get into bed, I get a mean case of the sads.

I've cried (only the tiniest bit) every Sunday night just at the thought of having to make it through another week. Mostly I mourn the freedom I had. That was always going to be the hardest part for me. Even if I loved my job, I would crave shorter hours and more time to relax. (Doesn't everyone?) It hits me really hard and I don't know how to overcome it.

Work itself is fine; it's the schedule I hate. Having to get in bed at 10pm. Waking up at 7:30 and still feeling exhausted. Feeling sick every morning on the way to work. Working for most of the eight hours I'm at work. Rush hour traffic.

It's as if I'm not cut out for the 9-to-5 grind. Would it be better if it was something I loved doing? If my office was closer to my house? If I could work different hours, still totaling 40 hours per week? I don't know.

That's what's difficult. I dislike it so much, but I don't really have a choice.

In a funk.

I’ve been in a funk lately.

There, I said it.

My variety of ‘funk’ is one that comes and goes. During the day, I go about my business and am legitimately okay; I’m not actively ignoring or repressing any bad feelings. Last weekend I had the best Valentine’s celebration. The weekend prior was Super Bowl Sunday and I spent the whole weekend with Erik. Yesterday I spent the day running errands and checking things off of my to-do list. I was in a pleasant mood.

For the past two weeks, however, as the clock reaches 9pm, 10pm, and later, it’s like my funk wakes up, stretching its arms and tapping me on the shoulder. Time to feel awful about yourself, it says.

Time to realize you’ve wasted nearly three years of your life. You graduated college in 2009 and have done nothing since. It doesn’t matter if you’ve slowly progressed since then – you still don’t have a job and your life is pointless. You’re an embarrassment to your family and your boyfriend; the only reason your friends still cheer you on is because they don’t have to deal with the consequences of your stagnant life. You can’t expect your relationship to continue sailing smoothly if you are an unproductive member of society.

And the worst part is that all of this is (mostly) true. I can fight back against the useless negativity – the self-criticism about my abilities and my past – but all of the above cannot be argued. I don’t have a job, I have wasted my life for three years, I am a burden on the people who care about me because, when I come up in conversation, they have to tip-toe around the fact that my life is a mess.

My friends are my saving grace. It’s like I said above – they can be more understanding because they have less of a stake in my success or failure. A few weeks ago, when I posted about finally applying for some jobs, you know what happened? A bunch of my friends – including some of you, actually – reached out to say how fantastic it was. How proud they were. One of my best friends texted me with such enthusiasm, you would’ve assumed I’d already been hired.

My parents, however, said nothing. Erik had no reaction. They’re just as aware of my struggles with this, yet I get no positive response. I’m not trying to call them out as bad people. I’m just saying that it hurts. I don’t expect them to baby me, nor do I necessarily seek their approval. But a little encouragement would go a long way. It would be nice to know that they’re proud of me, too.

That's the main cause of my funk. I know eventually I'll find a job, but right now I'm in the middle of searching and constantly reminding myself I'm not a failure, and it saps a lot of my energy. I'm just fortunate that I can still put a real, not-forced smile on my face for most of the day.

My Sleep Habits.

My sleeping habits are something I don’t discuss with most people. I used to, but then I got one too many judgmental reactions, so I stopped. It’s been on my mind a lot because I’m slipping back towards an abnormal schedule again, and I hate myself for it.

The summer between sophomore and junior year was when I developed the problem of staying up later and sleeping in later. I’d be going to bed at three or four in the morning and sleeping past noon. There were days where I could ‘fix’ my schedule by pulling an all-nighter and going to bed by 7pm. This would ensure 12+ hours of sleep, waking up at a decent hour, and feeling well-rested.

I continued that pattern until I graduated college – getting by during the semester because of obligations and surviving the summer with my all-nighter fixes. Once I graduated, everything got so much worse.

I had a lot on my shoulders. My health issues were new, my relationship was shaky, I hadn’t found a job, and now I was away from the comforts of college and seeing my friends all the time. It was a combination of anxiety and likely a small helping of depression that led to the complete destruction of my sleeping schedule.

There was a point in time where I was staying up until eight or nine in the morning, then sleeping all day long, until nine or even ten at night. There were nights I relied on my tried-and-true all-nighter fix, only to find myself sleeping for a ridiculous amount of time, usually into the following afternoon (meaning about 18 hours). It became a pattern because I wasn’t exactly happy to be waking up at 9pm; the disappointment and shame I felt only propelled the urge to sleep all day.

I’ve slowly been able to fix that problem; it hasn’t been that bad in a while. Still, I find myself staying up late and being unable to get out of bed in the morning. My body craves 12 hours of sleep. There’s no motivation to wake up at a decent hour because if I do, I have more hours in the day to realize how much of a failure I am. When I sleep in until 2pm, by the time I fully wake up and get ready for the day, it’s nearly dinnertime and there’s a lot less self-criticism at night.

But I can’t deny that I feel terrible. It helps me avoid the harsh reality that I’m failing at life by not having a job, but then I feel ashamed that I’m wasting my life away. I can’t win either way and it’s frustrating.

I’m keeping the comments closed on this one because I don’t want sympathy or words of advice. Everyone in my life already says “just get up early,” “set an alarm and force yourself to get up,” “make your job search your job.” None of these helps or motivates me; instead, I feel worse because those things don’t come easily to me. If you feel compelled to say something on this topic, feel free to e-mail me.

i hate being sick.

Things have been a little quiet around here this week because I've been sick. And no, not just with my stomach (although that's been persistent), but with another viral throat infection as well. I've spent the better part of this week either in bed or moping around the house, trying to be productive while feeling terrible about canceling all of my plans.

It's hard to find the energy to do anything when most of it is sapped from, well, being sick and the rest is spent being upset about it. All of my chores and to-do lists are piling up and I simply don't feel like touching any of them. I haven't even found the motivation to do my Joy Juice journal prompts or blog.

When I get sick, especially with my stomach troubles, I always get caught up in all the things I can't do. I can't go out this week. I can't go out this weekend. I probably can't go out next week. I can't see my friends, go dress shopping during the big sale weekend, or take a last-minute trip down the shore like I wanted. I can't eat what I want because I need to be on a bland diet, even if it doesn't even seem to be helping. And the ultimate can't that is I can't be a good girlfriend/friend/employee in this condition. (Leave it to me to be the most concerned about how this affects everyone else.)

This weekend is going to be spent collecting all of the bits of energy I have and improving my health. That's Step One, and nothing else can come before it. I have to put aside all my concerns for everyone else and fix myself first. There will be meal plans, daily schedules, and strict dietary guidelines. It won't be a fun and crazy Memorial Day Weekend, but it will ensure that I can have fun for the rest of the summer and beyond.

And besides, I can lay out in my backyard and it's almost as good as the beach - and I won't even need to deal with horrendous traffic!

(P.S. - I'm guest posting at my friend Stephany's blog Stephany Writes today while she's on vacation this week! I rarely get asked to guest post, so swing by and say hi!)

it's monday.

It's Monday.

It's Monday and I don't really have much to say, because my weekend was shot to hell from an IBS flare-up that had me laying and bed and sulking, not because I felt all that bad physically but because I felt emotionally broken again.

For months and months, I built up my confidence, pushed through my anxiety, and made really big leaps in terms of my eating habits. I've been on a relatively low-fat diet for months and had given up sugar for a while; I take probiotics and mulitvitamins every night, eat fruits instead of sugary snacks, and do yoga every morning.

Then Easter came. I allowed myself a break, eating cookies and candy and not feeling guilty for it. Even after that weekend, I kept giving myself reprieves, promising (as always) that I'd get started again tomorrow. Tomorrow never showed up.

In the past two weeks, I had not only been eating poorly but I was also getting cocky. Normally, I make sure to consolidate plans for one or two days a week, because going out means eating even worse and taking medicine, so it's nice to have a few days in between to "recover." Last week? I went out every. single. day. for a full week, just because. Seven days of not eating breakfast, not working out, treating myself to fast food or Starbucks, eating only one healthy meal, spending the night snacking, and overloading on my medicine.

Around Tuesday last week, I could feel my body giving out. The stomach cramps were coming back, I had indigestion when I went to bed, and I was exhausted. I promised that after going to work on Wednesday, I would give it a rest and get back to normal. Usually it just takes a day or two to get back on track after a long stretch of busy days. This time, it's taken four days, and I'm not even feeling back up to snuff yet.

I'm so frustrated with myself and my body. Obviously it's my own fault for giving up completely on my healthy habits and letting everything slide, but it really should not be this bad. I haven't felt like this for months and months. I've had weeks worse than this one and have recovered in a day or two. The fact that I've been taking it easy since Thursday and have still been feeling crummy makes me worry that I made things worse or that something not in my control brought me back to square one.

Square one is a shitty place to be, because square one is where I feel like nothing I'll ever do is going to fix this. And since I worked so hard for six months and one week undid all of that work? That fear of never solving this problem is back in my face, and I really don't like it.

confessions.

{♥}

• I am writing this post at 3am, in a randomly crappy mood, and self-medicating with Doritos and Diet Pepsi. I should be asleep, but I've had insomnia the past few nights so I figure, why bother?
  
  
• Although all of my random acts of kindness for my friends – letters, texts, e-mails, and care packages – are done solely because I want to make them smile, there is sometimes a teeny tiny part of my heart that wishes I would get a random package/letter/e-mail to brighten my day. To be clear, I absolutely do not do these things with any expectation of the favor being returned; this feeling crops up randomly, not before, during, or immediately after the actual thing I'm doing.
  
  
• Sometimes I just want to call my friends up and arrange a cry-your-face-off sleepover. Everyone has burdens and needs to have a good cry every once in a while, but all too often it happens when you’re all by yourself and you wish you had someone to hug you. I want to have one night where everyone takes turns letting it all out and has their support system right there.
  
  
• I feel like I am a completely uninteresting member of society. I have no interest in doing culturally-enriching things, like traveling or visiting museums or reading classic books. My taste in music and television is mostly pop-culture-ish and usually what I listen to and watch has no depth. The list of movies “everyone” has seen that I haven’t is ridiculously long, which makes me feel left out more often than you'd think. All of that makes me feel really dumb sometimes, because too often I sit silently while other people talk about all of these things and I wonder what I was doing when everyone was becoming so informed.
  
  
• Most of the time, I fully believe that I’m never going to figure out how to live with my IBS. I’m just going to keep moving through life how I am now – dealing with it when I have to, but otherwise struggling on a day-to-day basis. I’ve made very little actual progress, aside from my attitude, in the past two years. My methods only work now because I only leave the house every few days; holding a full-time job, or even a daily part-time one, would be nearly impossible.
  
  
• I think the main reason I don’t talk about my problems in depth with anyone is that I know nobody will have any answers for me. I’ve run through the dialogue enough in my head and in my diary to get that satisfaction of letting everything out, and although it would be nice to have someone agree that it sucks and validate my self-pity, I don’t think it would make me feel that much better.

This list turned out pretty melancholy - I promise I'm not as miserable as this makes me sound.

breathe.

I'm having a rough day.

Usually I make it a habit of not writing (or at at least not publishing) posts when I'm in a down-and-out mood because most of the time, I look back after doing so and realize it was a mood swing and I was being dramatic. But I figured it's been a while since I've written something that wasn't a list or recap or meme, so it might be good to get some things out of my brain.

There's nothing that made today particularly difficult. It's just my thoughts swirling around, the more negative ones making their way to the forefront. I can feel my mood turning because I'm sitting here, struggling to find something productive to do, feeling frustrated that my life isn't in a better place, and numbing it all by shoving another leftover cupcake in my mouth. I'm familiar with this "place," this feeling.

Family time has made me realize that I'm slowly becoming one of the problem children. As we talk about my brother and cousins graduating college and finding jobs, I cringe. As I see my older cousin talk about work, I cringe. As I watch my younger cousins make their way through college, talking about goals and dreams, I cringe. It hurts because I know how unsuccessful I've been. After years and years of being in honors classes and gifted-and-talented programs, I emerged from college with a GPA and record of which I'm mostly ashamed. I blame it on not being in the right major and being more focused on my extra-curricular activities, but it still sucks to know that I was capable of doing so much better.

I know I have to forget my past, to forgive myself for mistakes and move forward. For the most part, I have. But when it comes up in all the conversations around me, it becomes difficult not to let it eat away at me.

Fixing my health and anxiety problems is at a standstill. I keep myself knee-deep in denial by staying busy, claiming I have no time and that I'm doing better since I'm able to see my friends and go to parties and that I'll work on my diet after the next big event. The best thing I can equate it to is the high-dive at the community pool: I said I would do it, climbed the stairs, and am now standing at the top and realizing that I'm not so sure I want to dive in. I know I have to, but I'm hesitating and trying to find a way out.

Meanwhile, I've reached the point in my relationship when I have to start thinking and worrying. Well, not that I have to, but I do. Everything has been wonderful and amazing and I haven't worried about a damn thing up until now, which is great. But as time goes on, more things are at stake, and I'm panicking. I feel like, at any minute, the floodgates I put up to hold back the reality of my problems is about to burst and suddenly, it's going to become evident that things are much worse and much harder than he realizes.

And because of this, I can't sort my emotions out.

My brain is forcing walls up around my heart because it knows what I do, it knows that I love too fast and too hard; if I let that happen, once he sees how gargantuan my problems are he'll be gone and I'll be hurt. It doesn't matter if I'm exaggerating the severity of my problems in my head, or that he reassures me that he's here to help, or that maybe he doesn't care even if my problems are bigger than he expected. The walls have gone up and now begins the battle to tear them down.

The past month has been filled with activities that have kept me mostly distracted. Now that it's March and my calendar is empty, all of the things I've put off thinking about have come rushing back. I know it will pass, that things will get figured out or just pushed off again. For now all I can do is settle in, hope that getting it off my chest helps, listen to music, and just breathe.

just keep swimming.

A couple of months ago, I realized that at the core of all of my recent emotional struggles was a lot of grieving over all of the changes in my life. In the past year and a half, I dealt with graduating from college, not seeing my friends as often, losing the battle to keep a strong friendship with my cousin, breaking up with my boyfriend, and dealing constantly with my health problems. Once I understood that it was grief, I was able to work through some of it instead of crying into my pillow every night because I was so overwhelmed.

Fall of last year was my lowest point. I still hadn’t fully accepted that I was done with college and that I would never see my friends as often as I had while at school. I was in complete denial both about my health issues and my deteriorating friendship with my cousin. It all upset me because I had no control over it. The only thing still intact at that point was my relationship.

Since then, I’ve gained closure about moving on with life in many ways. By the end of January, I’d say, I was finally okay with the idea that my friends and I were moving into a new stage in our lives. I also accepted that my friendship with my cousin was never going to be the same and that I should stop putting in so much effort to save it if she didn’t care.

In the spring, I realized my relationship with Mark needed to end, but it was an emotional rollercoaster all throughout the summer. I never mentioned much here and don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but as much as I tried to imply I had moved on, I hadn’t. It was an example of my horrible indecisiveness because I couldn’t decide if the decision we’d made was right. When he was stressing out and bringing it to me, it was the right decision; when we would hang out and get along, it was the wrong one. It wasn’t until I realized that I could find the good parts of our relationship somewhere else without all the negative ones that I was able to completely wash my hands of it. We’re still friends, but there isn’t anymore emotional flip-flopping on my part. It was an incredibly difficult decision to come to terms with, but doing so took a lot of weight off my shoulders that I didn't even realize I was holding.

Even with all of those accomplishments, all of those changes that I’ve finally accepted and settled in my mind, there’s one that continues to linger: my health issues. It always comes back to that. I could write pages about it, how I’m tired of feeling like I have no control over it, how often I think about what I could’ve done to prevent it, how I just want to go back to my old self, or how I constantly think about all the things I could be doing if I were healthy. It’s becoming harder and harder to tell people that no, I’m still not better and no, I haven’t really tried much.

There are things I should be doing, OTC medicines I can take and changes in my diet that should be relatively easy. Something, though, is holding me back – fear. Fear that I’m going to try any or all of the suggestions out there and that I’m not going to get better. Fear that this truly will be something with which I’ll have to constantly struggle. Fear that I will never have the life I’ve always wanted – hosting parties, going out with friends, being an event or wedding planner, even being a mother – because I’ll be too hampered by my illness. That’s really the part of it that keeps me up at night, that makes me cry and feel lonely, because it’s really difficult for anyone else to understand.

I know I’m making myself sound like a victim when I’m the only one who can fix my problems. Still, though, I want to say this: be thankful if you are untethered by health issues, either physical or mental. For much of my life I held back from things not because I couldn’t do them, but because I chose not to because I was afraid. Now that the ability to choose is taken away from me in most instances, I realize how much I took it for granted. It sounds silly and dramatic to say that considering I just have IBS and not something worse, but it’s really the truth.

As much as I’m afraid of none of my efforts being worthwhile, I don’t really have a choice. So I’ll keep trying and keep pushing and hope that some day, I can look back on this time in my life and be glad I made it through.

who made you king of anything?

This may or may not be the theme song to my life. And by that I mean, it most definitely is.



All my life I've tried
to make everybody happy
while I just hurt and hide
waiting for somebody to tell me
it's my turn to decide.

I don't mean to say that I feel this way on a constant basis, but it seems to happen quite a lot. There are a handful of people in my life - usually the most important ones - who believe they know better than me. If I had a dollar for every time my parents, someone else in my family, or Mark told me how they think I should handle my life, what they think I should do, I would have a fair amount of money to my name. I wish I were exaggerating.

This also doesn't mean that these people don't mean well or that they don't love me, because they do. I don't wish to shed a bad light upon them - everyone who does it has a thousand shining qualities that outweigh this one pesky, negative one. It's just a bad combination of the way they "help" and the way I react to it.

It probably grew from being raised by parents who worked hard to get where they wanted. My mom tells me stories on how she buckled down and always studied; my dad, though slacking a bit in college, has worked like a dog at several jobs since then. To be honest, I feel like they both embody the attitude of having to work hard and be somewhat miserable to get what you want. They were the reason I picked accounting as my major, when I was applying to colleges and had no idea what I wanted. They were the same reason that I begrudgingly stuck with accounting, despite wanting to change majors as early as sophomore year in college.

The majority of my family has similar opinions - it's less about choosing something I enjoy and more about what will be the "best" for my future. Mark was even worse about it, pushing me when he barely knew me, my goals, or what was "best." Being surrounded by so many people, acting like they know exactly who I am and what I want, is exhausting.

Luckily I have my friends. My four best friends from college pulled me through some heinous moments, listening to me vent about how my parents completely shot down my suggestion to switch majors. How I could feel myself hating it more and more every day. How I didn't understand why my parents couldn't be open-minded and supportive, like all of my friends' parents were when they all made choices and changes.

It's only recently that I've begun to force my own opinion into conversations, talking about dream jobs more realistically and making it clear that I'm not going to be pushed around anymore. And, when possible, I refrain from talking about such topics with people who can't get past what they think I should be doing.

Because it's like Sara says, who cares if you disagree? You are not me.

faltering friendship.

Change is difficult, both to experience and accept. I believe it’s even harder when it’s a person who’s changing, something I've been struggling with in regards to my cousin. I usually talk about it in a forgiving way, where I defend her and hope that she’s just going through a phase. Recently, however, I’ve learned that I’m only hurting myself by continuously making excuses for her.

It all started just before her senior year of high school - in the summer of 2008 - which is when I could feel a significant shift in our friendship. It stopped moving and stopped growing – gone were the days when we spent hours together, baking brownies and having mock photo shoots in her back yard.

Instead, any time we had together was spent silently watching TV while she texted friends, which I tried to brush off despite finding it rude. I let a lot of things slide – I wanted to pretend things were okay, that our friendship wasn’t morphing back to being ‘just cousins.’ She would treat our time together like an inconvenience, both in the planning stages and while we actually hung out. Getting her to pin down a time to hang out was difficult and, once I did, I felt as though she really didn’t care to be there. Of course, there were exceptions – the occasional fun car ride around her town or visit to her shore house – but for the most part, our time together was awkward and forced.

I quickly made my way to the bottom of her priority list as time spent with her friends became more appealing. It was clear she found my company boring, something she once actually said to me via an anonymous ‘truth box’ on Myspace (yes, I know, Myspace is breeding ground for drama, which is why I deleted it soon after). I remember receiving the message and being so taken aback and hurt that she would ever outright insult me like that. It should’ve been the breaking point, but I continued to defend her actions in my mind.

Still, for a short while after that, our friendship was visibly fractured. We only saw each other at family events, at which point we barely said two words to each other. I saw her mother (with whom I have a separate relationship) more often than I saw her; she would walk in the kitchen to say hi before going out with her friends, even as I sat there helping plan her graduation party.

Last summer, I chose to confront her about everything in a series of Facebook messages, because I'm a coward and am terrible with face-to-face confrontation. Her first reaction was to be extremely defensive, claiming that she wasn't to blame for any of the issues I had listed. After a few replies back and forth, she eventually showed compassion and agreed that we were drifting because we were at two completely different points in life. She said that we just needed to give it time and that hopefully, in the future, things would settle back into place.

We eventually recovered from all the drama, but things haven’t been the same. I see her once every couple of months and we put on a good show both for the family and for ourselves, acting like we’re still as close as we once were. We exchange heartfelt picture collages and graduation speeches, though it mostly feels like we’re playing pretend. It’s emotionally exhausting to act like we’re still close when we’re not. My texts still go unanswered most of the time and there is literally no effort on her part to see me. The only communication I get that originates with her is an occasional enthusiastic Facebook comment about how much she misses me.

The hardest part of it has been that we were once similar people with similar interests. We were best friends, relying on each other and expecting our friendship to be there when all others failed. When she was still a sophomore in high school, she experienced a falling out with friends and explicitly said that she was glad she could always count on me. I expected us to remain close for the rest of our lives, being in each others' wedding parties and spending holidays together with our families. I thought she had those same expectations; now I'm not so sure.

Her life has morphed into something different than what it used to be – which isn’t in itself a bad thing. Whether I like it or not, though, she’s changed. Obviously she still retains some of her old self, which is the part I can connect with when we have our good moments, but there is too much newness to which she thinks I can’t relate. The most unfortunate part of it all is that she’s let the change in her life affect our relationship for the worse, seemingly without any regret or concern.

Sometimes I wonder why this shakes me up so much, why I defended her for so long and tried to make everything seem okay. It comes down to this: until college I never had many solid friendships, and my biggest fear is that any friendship I have is going to dissolve. Essentially, she perpetuated that fear. But it’s not just that she walked away from me as a friend, or that she changed, or even that she doesn't seem to care that our friendship is falling apart; it’s that, in my mind, she was the one person who was never going to do that to me. Our friendship bordered on sisterhood – I may expect friendships to fall apart, but not a bond between almost-sisters.

To have your ‘sure thing’ turn around and not be as sure as you expected is earth-shattering, which is why I still struggle to accept that things might never be the same. There will always be a part of me who hopes she just needs to grow up and that, in a few years, we’ll be laughing about all of this. I really hope that part of me is right.

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.

"way too thin."

I have been a very lucky individual in that I have never struggled with my weight. That being said, being skinny isn't always sunshine and rainbows. Throughout my life, mostly when I was younger, I had to deal with everyone thinking I had an eating disorder. I understand that people are just being cautious because eating disorders are a big deal. But after hearing it so many times, it gets pretty frustrating. Recently, I've had a family member of mine express concern and it's irking me to no end.

Let me back up and give you a summary. I was stick thin my entire childhood, up until I went off to college. It was a combination of being in dance classes at least three days a week and having an extremely active metabolism. I would eat everything and anything and not suffer any consequences because I would work it all off in dance.

When I went to college, I put on weight. This is a fact. I'm not trying to say I got fat - which is what most people assume I'm saying - but I legitimately put on a good ten to fifteen pounds by sophomore year. At the same time, I grew into my body a bit more. After that I fluctuated within a five-pound range of weight. In my senior year, however, I completely dropped the five pounds due to my health problems and anxiety.

Back to the issue at hand, the problem I have with this person is that I believe this all stemmed from the comparison between me and my eighteen-year-old cousin. She went off to college this year, grew out of the same gangly, bone-thin body frame I had and put on her "Freshman 15." We used to have identical body types and perhaps there was a even time when she was slimmer than me, so I can see how the contrast between us is larger than usual.

This is really the only reason I can think of for this person to bring it up, because I honestly don't think I look any different than I did the past two-ish years. To be told I'm "way too thin" is just ridiculous. Maybe it's just sitting on me differently; I don't really know. But the concern had to have started somewhere, and I'm thinking that maybe that's it.

Sometimes I feel weird putting things like this out there. I know that there are thousands of people who struggle with their weight and would kill to be in my position, but there are two sides to the spectrum. Overall I think that nobody should judge another person based on weight unless there is clear evidence that there are problems, whether it be someone eating more or less than is really healthy. As much as the media pushes the idea that being overweight is bad, it also creates a backlash for skinny girls because people become hyper-sensitive and will suspect an eating disorder after just one half-eaten meal or one refusal of a snack.

I've always been comfortable with my body and my eating habits and always will be. I make changes when I feel they're necessary. Still, no matter how okay I am with myself, whenever the "are you eating" question rears its ugly head, it is always a cause for frustration.

anger and regret.

I'm angry with myself.

That is the single biggest reason for my all of my troubles. Most days I can bury it, blaming sickness and anxiety and the poor economy. But I'm angry.

Angry that I wasted all of my potential. I used to be intelligent and hard-working, in gifted and talented classes throughout my elementary school years and in the highest honors class through high school. But even in high school, I got lazy. The game of school was boring to me, a waste of my time. Why study things that didn't matter, only to be tested on how well I can remember them? I never studied in high school; I relied on how well I knew the material overall and the review sessions my peers had during free period.

College was a disaster. I was studying something I wasn't even sure I liked and having to play another game. In my major, they basically set you on a track and you either succeeded the whole way through or fell off. I fell off before I had even started. My grades were terrible because I simply didn't care. It wasn't what I wanted. And besides that, it was the stupidity of school again. We were studying things we'd never need to know, only to be given incredibly difficult tests to see how many hours of our lives we'd wasted remembering and understanding something that didn't matter.

We were set up to get an internship after junior year and a job offer for after graduation. I showed no interest in getting an internship. By senior year, I was struggling to apply half-heartedly for jobs, knowing my GPA wasn't what it should be (or could be) and that in my heart, I didn't want it. Another silly ruse, these interviews were. "Tell us what you know about our company." You're just another accounting firm, with offices here and customers in this sector. That's always what I told them, in so many words, because I really didn't know what else I was supposed to say. I never had any questions, either, because it's all meaningless; I don't really care about what your program for women is about or why you won this award, I just want a job.

But now, I'm just angry and annoyed with myself. I had it easy, so very easy. All I needed to do was show up to class, study this nonsense and push out A's. I know I was absolutely, 100% capable of doing so. Even if I still hadn't been interested in an internship, I'd at least have had a solid academic background for when I interviewed for jobs. I could easily have had a job and at least that part of my life would be under control.

Everyone tells me the past is the past, that I should move on and continue with life. It's simply not that easy. Every day I have to deal with the fact that everyone around me is moving forward, that my accounting classmates are "successful" because they walked down the pre-determined path with ease. Whenever I look for jobs, I'm all too aware of how my past failures are hurting me. Combine that with the fact that I can barely leave this house to spend time with friends, never mind go on interviews, and I am just filled to the brim with regret.

And throughout this whole thing, I've found it's incredibly hard to forgive myself. I spend all my forgiveness on those around me, trying to avoid arguments and swallowing my opinions on things. I have none left for myself.

lackluster.

On Friday I threw myself a birthday party. We had sub sandwiches and margaritas, played NES and Wii Mario Kart, and watched ridiculous YouTube videos. During and immediately after the party, I thought it a success.

But slowly, a sadness crept into my mind. What I had hoped the party would do for me didn't happen. I placed too much importance on it. I figured seeing all my friends would lift my spirits, make me feel better, or at least distract me for a night. Distract me it did, but not very well.

Catching up with everyone was a double-edged sword. It was wonderful to hear what they were doing, but with every new story, my heart hurt at the fact that I had nothing to share. Nobody really asked me what I was up to, probably because they all know I'm not up to much. And I can understand that - why discuss my problems on my birthday, a day when I'm supposed to be happy?

I felt mostly detached from everyone. Yes, I laughed at the boys being excited for NES, or at Melissa attempting to play Super Mario 3. I got excited over my presents and serving our margaritas with umbrella straws. But there were little moments, when everyone was talking to each other, telling stories about jobs and classes, when I felt completely alone.

That is, I've decided, the worst part of all of this. In a group of people where everyone is moving forward - especially among my friends where they're moving in leaps and bounds - I am standing achingly still. I'm the single person that is faltering, who's stuck with poor health and an unclear view of what path to take.

I hate saying all of this, I really do, because I know my friends read this blog. It isn't really their fault, but I know it would make them sad to know that I was unhappy. But I have to be honest with both myself and those around me. The problem is, simply, that nobody could've given me what I wanted for my birthday. Relief from my anxiety and health problems isn't exactly something you can wrap up in a box and hand to someone.

The bottom line is that I hoped this party would be something it never could have been. I correlated seeing my friends with feeling better without realizing that venting was a key part of the process, and obviously I wasn't going to have a mental breakdown at my own birthday party.

I'm trying to see my party for the success that it was, but I'm still finding it difficult. When this moment passes, as I'm sure it will, I'll have a recap of how it went. For now you can check out Melissa's little review, which I actually quite liked.

exhausted.

Sometimes my life makes me just want to scream at the top of my lungs at everyone. I thought I would be lucky enough never to be in a situation that nobody around me understood, but I am. I've explained it what seems like thousands of times that, although I am working on it, I'm still sick and I still have anxiety about going out. Usually the person I'm talking to acts like they understand; they acknowledge it and tell me to feel better. I even try to convince myself that they get it. It's not until I get a text message or e-mail inviting me out for dinner or shopping or whatever it may be that I realize... nobody understands.

Nobody understands that I can't just hop in my car and go somewhere I'm not comfortable with - my anxiety has made it so that even going places I'm comfortable with is a challenge. Nobody understands that the places I do go - my boyfriend's house, to see my aunt or cousin - are situations in which I can just barely pull myself together to go out. And because nobody understands, I worry that everyone dismisses it. I will admit that I have a tendency to be a bit paranoid about what people think about me, but sometimes I feel that I'm actually hitting the nail on the head about things nobody wants to say. I'm just scared of what everybody is thinking about my situation and the decisions I make.

It's difficult to decide what I'm supposed to do. If I don't at least try to make plans, my friendships are going to fade away. I feel too greedy always asking to meet at my house, since my friends live far. So, I make plans to go out. And then I break them. Somewhere in my mind, broken plans are better than not having any to begin with. At the same time, every time I do break plans, it makes me depressed. I usually spend hours feeling terrible about myself, angry that I couldn't just suck it up and go somewhere. I worry about my reputation for being a flake, for becoming that person who doesn't answer texts and ditches her friends. Sure, they know I'm sick, but I can't help wonder what they think when I say that, yet again, I can't make it. Just the fact that the meet-ups are planned anywhere but my house show me that they don't truly understand what it is I'm going through.

All of this frustrates me to a point I can't even communicate properly. I'm coming up on being sick for a year now and I don't even know which direction to go in first to fix it. Do I work on my anxiety? Do I go on strict diets and hope it helps my stomach? Or do I try to tackle both? These questions, this entire dilemma, weighs on my mind day in and day out, because it's unavoidable. It has infiltrated every aspect of my life. The only days that are okay are ones when I don't leave this house, and that's no way to live.

I have spent the past couple of months now feeling this way and it's getting tiresome. The holidays have been a distraction, but that's all they've been, seeing as it's all rushing back in now. I've spent countless nights crying myself to sleep, pleading with God that I get better, composing apologetic and explanatory letters to friends in my mind that I never send. During the day I try to trick myself into feeling surrounded by my friends. I e-mail and tweet them, post Facebook wall messages and speak noncommittally about getting together "sometime soon." Even by doing my Christmas shopping, by thinking about and picking out gifts for each of them, I've pretended they're closer than they really are.

I know I have amazing friends. They have made it clear that they are here for me. But I've trapped myself into the thought process that they're too busy and my problems are just too big, and thrown in a little bit of "I don't like to bother people so I don't ask for help." I've let my paranoid imagination convince me, at times, that nobody really cares because nobody's here to help me. The truth is, I have never felt more alone in my entire life.

And I have no idea what I'm supposed to do to make any of this better.

where i am.

So.

I had complete emotional and mental breakdown on Friday. It was ugly. I was crying and screaming so much that I was hoarse for the rest of the night. It got so bad that I actually had to stop because I felt faint.

It felt good to let it out, but considering it was my mother and brother listening to my complaints, I knew I wasn't going to get the sympathetic response I wanted. Our family lacks that emotional bond - we communicate mostly through sarcastic remarks and jokes. That's part of what had been getting to me, seeing as any progress I made was ignored, but if I tripped up with my sleeping or my diet, judgment would be passed in a jeering comment. As much as I was glad to offer them a real explanation, I could still use a few nice words and a hug.

The problem with complaining to them is that they also make it perfectly clear that all my problems are my own and can only be fixed by me. While I'm completely aware of that fact, I would've liked at least a little sympathy that things suck right now that are a bit beyond my control. I have a habit of blaming everyone and everything for my problems instead of myself, and because of that, my parents have taken to blaming ONLY me for any of my problems. There's no middle ground, and it's frustrating, because I certainly didn't wish anxiety or IBS onto myself.

After explaining everything in a little more detail, it's becoming clearer that my anxiety is playing a bigger part in all of this than I would like to admit. For my entire life, I've experienced all my stress in my gut. Every holiday, family gathering, class trip or major event in school, or presentation in college, I would wake up feeling sick and a bit flustered. When I was healthy, I was able to calm myself by taking some deep breaths and mentally talking my nerves down. The problem now is that my anxiety is compounded with a stomach that isn't functioning right, so everything is made worse. And when I think about it, the worst parts of being sick are the instances where I'm stressed out - I can't go anywhere without knowing that there will be accessible bathrooms both at the location and on the trip there. It's gotten so bad that I even get nervous when driving the fifteen minutes to Target.

I've always known, even if just in the back of my mind, that my anxiety was playing a part here. But I kept convincing myself that if I got the illness under control first, then I would stop having a horrible time driving places and attending events because my stomach wouldn't be flipping out every ten minutes. It seems, though, that I really have to consider working on the anxiety alongside my health, because I think the anxiety has just gotten worse since I've been sick.

This whole thing has taken so much energy out of me, and honestly, I've probably been struggling with depression lately. I spend almost all of my time at home, only going out to see The Boy or to go to work. Any event that I do go to, I stress and worry about it. Just this weekend, I drove to my college campus to visit my cousin and go to a party. It's an hour drive, one I'm familiar with and that is on a main road with plenty of gas stations and stores, just in case I need to stop. The entire drive down was miserable and I had to stop once. When I finally got to campus, I spent fifteen minutes in the student center because I had to use the restroom again and I was getting nervous about actually going into my cousin's dorm. Then, even after the visit went well, I spent another ten minutes debating about even going to the party. Finally I gave in, but I was still feeling less than pleasant.

The most frustrating and depressing aspect of this entire situation is that I used to be fine. I used to go to parties, events, and family gatherings with no issue. I used to drive around for hours without stopping anywhere. Now I feel so limited with what I can do, especially when I'm with other people. But I'm hoping to use my frustration as motivation to do everything in my power to make this better. I'm fixing my sleep, going on an even stricter diet, and working on my anxiety. I want to be normal again, because this? Right now? Really, really sucks.

busy bee.

Has it really been two weeks? Really?

When I started writing this post, I thought it had only been a week since my last post. Wrong-O (or as my mother would say - because she's weird like that - wrong-o, long-o).

Anyway.

In addition to another round of feeling sorry for myself, I've spent the past week being the pseudo mom of the house. On Tuesday, my mom had surgery to remove her gall bladder and to do something about her herniated umbilical cord. I say "do something" because I'm no medical genius and since I don't exactly know what a hernia even is, I can't say what it is one does to correct it.

I've decided it's very weird when your mother is incapacitated. My mom has rarely been majorly sick in my lifetime. In fact, I couldn't even cite another instance where she was forced into bed because of illness or surgery. So in my recollection of life in this house, there has never been a day where my mom isn't being my mom.

This, of course, means that many of her duties fall to me, while my dad takes care of the rest (and my brother kinda just keeps getting to do whatever he wants). Mostly I've been doing what you'd expect - cleaning, laundry, helping with meals, and doing dishes. OH, the dishes. My dad refuses to do dishes, so it's always my task. Quite frankly, I'm glad to do it to the extent that he's terrible at it. But I'm getting so sick of it. I have come to the conclusion that there will definitely be a dish washer in my future home, NO compromises.

On top of all that, my "deal" with my parents about living here is that in lieu of rent, I have to do five hours of housework per week. Not a bad deal, but of course, this means I get to do everything nobody else wants to. I washed my dad's MESS of a car last weekend, I've trimmed the hedges and raked the yard twice already, and then there was today. Today I had the wonderful task of re-painting the gate to our backyard and the piece of fence on the opposite side of the house. And we have a chain-link fence. Right. Never mind that I picked the windiest day to do this and my drop cloth was fluttering in the wind, but the silver paint I was using isn't exactly washable. After finishing the job, I examined my arms and saw a few little drops and thought I had done a decent job of not turning myself into the tin man. Until I came inside and looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered that - as usual - I had gotten little pin-prick-sized droplets all over my face. Cut to me using paint thinner to remove it. PAINT THINNER. ON MY FACE.

Add that to the humongous pile of dishes I got to do from my dad making eggplant parm, and you'll understand why I promptly treated myself to a vanilla chai latte and chocolate iced donut from Dunkin Donuts.

giving.

I am nice to the core.

I am nice to the point of detriment to myself, apparently. But that's not how I see it - to me, this is who I am, it's what I do.

There would be no Cait without writing pages of college advice for my cousin or baking brownies to give out at college for Christmas, taking extra time to decorate a few with blue sprinkles - instead of green and red - for my Jewish friends. It wouldn't be me if there weren't three weeks spent on making a scrapbook for a best friend who's moving away or packing that project into three nights for another best friend's sweet sixteen. I'm eager to help, to give, to make somebody smile.

I am criticized, at times, for never saying no. My parents say that I'm a carpet, allowing the world to walk all over me. Even when people frustrate me, I still help them. I usually forgive too easily, because I don't see the point in holding grudges and feeling rotten. My cousin and I are on weird footing right now because she's busy with all of her other friends, yet I still spend a good chunk of my time thinking up useful college tips and answering any questions that come my way. When she does call, I make every effort to see her. Nobody understands why - they think I'm living in a dream world, that I'm being used and, at times, abused. I'm not. Because her time is limited, I know that if I don't see her on her time, I don't see her at all. People would rather see me "stand up for myself" by refusing to hang with her when she finally has time, to ignore her until she notices things are going wrong. Seems rather immature to me.

What I have realized recently, however, is that being a nice person makes everyone else seem not-so-nice in comparison. Let it be known that I absolutely do not do things for the purpose of getting something in return. Never have, never will. But I can't help noticing that some subconscious part of mind does expect something. It's not a matter of tit-for-tat, where I give you a gift so you give me one back. It's more than that, something I can't really describe.

All I know is that, when I hit my lowest points, that desire in the back of my mind comes out in full force. I sit at home and let myself mull over everything that's going wrong, wondering where everyone seems to have gone. I know in my right mind that everyone's right here, within reach and easy to contact, but for some reason it's not that easy. I don't do well asking for help, especially in this instance because I don't exactly know what I even want to ask for.

By being a giver, I've never taught myself how to take, how to lean on someone, how to ask for what I need and want. I just expect someone to notice, to realize, to intuitively understand that hey, something's wrong. I can't bring myself to ask for help, because that's taking; however, if someone else just happens to notice that I need help, then they're giving.

That's how things make sense to me, but probably nobody else. Because I'm awesome that way.