holding tight
i feel that for the past 6 months i've been in limbo, reframing my view of my world (over and over). i get it. i get me. and then i don't. i'm always grasping at straws trying to understand this dread stuck in the pit of my stomach. i feel it eating at me, but i'm thin-skinned and i'm just waiting for it to finally burrow through.1
i think i'm reluctant to admit that things are, for the most part, okay. and that i'm doing fine.2 it's just so much easier to be pessimistic. when you're already at rock-bottom, you have the comfort of knowing you can only ever go up from there. but what then when you're finally middling? when the world is no longer ending? when you're partway out and climbing higher means the fall gets further? when you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop?
this is maybe the problem of seeing "happy" as the light at the end of some tunnel, when it's never been a place. it's not a goalpost or finish line that i can keep moving back and back. "oh, i'll be happy when i get a new job', "i'll be happy when i get a raise", "when i finally move out," "when-" etc. etc. because this is how i've been dooming myself. and i can't help it. of course i want more than this. who isn't always hoping for better? (i'll call it greed or envy before i call it ambition, but either way, i'm trying to come to terms with this feeling too.)
still, it's hard to see "happy" as something already there. when there's dirt under your nails, it's easier to pretend (and suppose) than actually feel. i can think it, but i'm not convinced yet, if that makes any sense. i'll keep working on it.
but i promise that i want to believe i've been clutching onto it this entire time. that fear in me is proof of it, and ironically, i know i can trust my apprehension more than anything else. that i have something worth losing is a thing to celebrate!!!
happy new year! i cannot promise myself i will write more often. i don't think i even consider that a goal i need or want to fulfill — though it sometimes feels like it should be. i will try to promise myself that this is something i won't beat myself up over. i'll probably disappear again. thank you to whoever has stuck around!
this was written in an a sitting between things for work. i have a chronic editing problem so i'll be rewording things from time to time, sorry!
gif from siinamota's strobe light a very formative song from middle-school-dom.
edit: i think i'm most afraid of sabotaging myself. it's one thing to believe that good is there and another to believe that you're deserving of it. sometimes i'm still the angsty teenager who thinks she is the most evil person alive.↩
i still slingshot between fine and roiling self-hatred but honestly, who doesn't to some extent? still, going back to therapy & getting back on meds is a goal for 2025.↩