Running on Empty

My teeth are clean but my car's on E. The turkeys have been bought but I have to sell an article of clothing to see a movie. I have debt, you have debt we all have tons and tons of debt. In fact I haven't even bought a house yet but the debt I've accumulated adds up to that of a mortgage on a small house.

At the end of the day I'm a plain Jane. I look no better than the girl sitting next you. I have the same problems as everyone else in this world. I have ambition that is no stronger than 50% of those around me. I work, sleep, laugh, play, cry, get angry, go to the doctor, talk to other people, buy groceries just like everyone else. I am just me and I could be no different than the thousands and thousands of faces you see in your given lifetime. I am average.

What can I bring to a law school that others cannot?? So after going through the painful process of realizing how unextraordinary I am I now have to tell you how I'm so awesomely unique. Fine. My dad was in the military and my mother was raised by a farmer and from that odd combination I received an incredible work ethic. I take my job tasks seriously and put the maximum amount of effort into everything I do that will produce the greatest results. I am meticulous down to the last detail and tend to catch mistakes that other people that have looked at the same problem two or three times have not caught. In short, I'm also a perfectionist. I will stay until the project is done and it is done well. I'm also an extrovert. I'm not afraid to speak my opinion and since I rarely like to look like an idiot when I am doing this, I will know how to speak my mind in an intelligent and informed manner. I like to meet and work with other people because even when I'm challenging the opinions of others or having a discussion I do allow myself to be open to learning from what other people think and how they think. Plus, I know how to cook so during late night study sessions we will have ample amounts of refreshment.

Writing because I have to start somewhere

I've told myself for about a month and a half that I'm going to start writing my personal statements tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. The thing about tomorrow is that there is always another tomorrow to push it to. 

I don't know why I can't write them, I keep saying it's writer's block but I don't think that's quite right. The fact of the matter is I keep losing excitement, for everything. I'm going to New York in less than a month, it's Christmas time, friend's Thanksgiving is less than a week away, I'm applying for law school and none of this excites me. This world is a bitch and the people around me are, lets face it, cruel.  I've been excited about many of these things before only to be met with snide comments, protestation, and horrible jokes. Yes I'm strong but for fucks sake back the fuck off once and a while. Why can't I just be happy without someone shitting all over it and bringing me down??

I must be a real fool to think that my enthusiasm for something means anything to people. Why when you're having a bad day am I the person people shit all over? 

Maybe it's not other people though, maybe it's just me. Maybe I've grown so cynical and so jaded that I can't be excited about anything anymore. What is the point really? The build up that excitement brings just lead to a much bigger fall when you're disappointed. Let's face it, were always disappointed. Nothing is perfect and nothing ever goes according to plan so why have the expectation for such when human nature dictates that something is only as good as it's weakest link. A happy face is merely a facade for a person that is ready to rip your face off. 

Why do I want to go to law school?? I need a change. I need to feel like I'm going forward again instead of down the backwards slope I feel I'm beginning to fall into. I want to learn something again that will challenge me, that I can't devour and spit back out in 30 seconds. I want intelligent discussion about the law and politics that doesn't keep me afraid of offending or boring someone. I want to be challenged. I want my life to have a purpose and a meaning to it. I want my sense of self worth back, like I'm doing something that I'm meant to be doing. Mostly, I want to feel excited again. 

Suck it up

I've started about half a dozen posts in the last month or so and they've all been about being lazy or having writer's block. I've been obsessing about how things are going to happen or where my life is going. I'm so worried about what's going to happen now and how I can't control the things going on right now that I'm no longer thinking about the future or what I want. I'm too busy worried about not stepping on people's toes, worried about what other people think of me or how I'm going to impress them, worried about how to implement someone else's visions that I have no idea who or what I am any more. 

So fuck it all and here is all is in a nut shell. 

I'm 26 and I don't like to go out and drink my life away any more. I use to do it, I use to get a strange rush after binging and then not remembering anything. There is nothing fun about forgetting parts of your life, ask anyone with Alzheimer's, why in the fuck would anyone want to give themselves early on-set Alzheimer?? It does suck how much this limits myself from my current group of friends, they see it as kicking them out of my life and not wanting to hang out any more, I see it more as not having much in common any more. While my drunk stories are fun for people to recount over and over again it sucks for me because I get to stand there like an idiot and own them. 

I like to sit at home by myself and watch t.v, be on my computer, listen to music, or talk on my phone. I don't care that it's an isolating activity because I already know how to disappoint myself and I'm better at controlling that than controlling other people. I also like to hang out with my friends and I'm not afraid of new people or new situations. Call it introvert or call it extrovert but we all have a little of each, I just tend to have a lot of both. 

I get stressed and I blog, eat a lot, eat nothing, yell, cry, or I do all of the above but I do it all my way. I can throw a party for being depressed or I can throw one for celebrating my brilliance, but at the end of the day everyone around you can disappear leaving you with only yourself, will you be happy with yourself, because I already know who I am, and I like myself. 

I can do anything and fuck you very much and I will. Call it a God complex, call it 20 something invisibility, but I can do anything. The possibilities in life are in fact endless and I can take whatever path I choose and run with it. I live in a free society and I can choose my own destiny. Why the fuck am I letting my friends and my fears stop me?? I live under most of the same constraints as everyone else, crushing debt, job responsibilities, family and friend, but I can do whatever I want to do, so I should just suck it up and do it. 

Yes, I live in my own bubble. The fantasies and situations in my head are probably a very different perception than the ones in your head. I am working on it but for fucks sake I don't have to worry about anyone but me. I do realize that there are people who I interact with and that my action do effect them in some way shape or form but as far as it being my first or second reaction to think about the people around me, it just isn't. Those I care about receive more consideration than most but at the end of the day I live in a bubble and the first thing I think about is me. Egocentric? Yes, it is but I find as I grow older and I make my self more aware of the things going on around me it make it easier to think about others. That being said I still assume people know thing that are blatantly obvious to me but may not be to others. I hate it when people explain the obvious to me, so I tend not to explain what I perceive to be obvious. 

I hate it when people second guess me. I'm not perfect, even I can admit that, but fuck!! even if I'm wrong I still get to learn a less when I fail. I may hate learning that lesson, I may complain about it, and I may want to jump off a bridge because I had to learn it but let me make my own decisions. I'm sick of being judged for the decisions I make. I make most mistakes once some twice but even when I drive my car two hundred miles an hour towards a brick wall trust that either I know what I'm doing or that when I screw up I will know not to do it again. We all learn just as much from our mistakes as we learn from our successes. 

My life is at the moment not my idea of an ideal life. I believe in God but have no idea why this is life he had planned for me. I read something recently that intrigued me about this. Maybe God is just as helpless as we all are. Maybe he's not a puppet master pulling all the strings and making all the decisions but instead a passenger sitting besides us being our cheerleader, mourning our losses and disappointments, or resting his reassuring hand on our shoulder. That he plays an active role and not just a passive one. I'm beginning to think this is more of a possibility. There is not some omnipresence to blame our downfalls on but instead we have to look to ourselves. In that case there are relationships that I have with people that I don't understand. When the person you befriended in the beginning is not the same person they are now, and you've changed too, what is there to base a friendship on? When you can't be with someone you've known for a number of years and they know you just as well or better than you know yourself, what do you do? When you found a very compatible companion when you were 15 and you chose different paths that look like they will never cross again, do you keep your faith and hope or do you drop it all and settle or find something similar? When your dreams scare you do you give them up or fight the fear until your dream becomes what they once were?

Finally, What do you do when life comes knocking at your door, wearing boxing gloves, hungry for a fight? Do you shut the door and cower under you bed? Or, do you stand straight, spit it it's face and throw the first punch? Religion, your mother, your best friend, your husband/wife, your boyfriend/girlfriend, nor can you children tell you how to run your life. They might be considerations in the decision, some stronger than others, but letting them dictate what to do with your life makes it no longer your life. So I'm now choosing to live my life, my way, and whether you believe in my interpretation of how God's guidance works or not, he's got his hand on my shoulder and I'm diving in head first.

Swirling Mania of Life

I'm at best average and at worst the carbon copy of everyone else. If that makes no sense to you, maybe it shouldn't. I realized the last thing I wrote had nothing to do with me as a person but showed you more of a side I show the world. Fact of the matter is most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing, where I'm going, or who I'm going to be when it's all finished. 

When I'm afraid I shut down, push things out of the way and try my best to forget about what it is that's freaking me out. I hate getting that embarrassing internal "what the fuck did you do and why did you do it feeling." I try my ass off never to feel that way. In the process though I forget to live my life. I'm so freaked out about being rejected that even though I talk over and over and over again about leaving in 8 months to go to law school I cannot seem to pick up a piece of paper and start writing about why I want to go to law school. I'm afraid that I will have to pick a different path for my life. 

I'm afraid of letting go of the love and the hope that I have with Brian. I'm so comfortable with him that it's so easy to fall into the feelings and even the intensity of the feeling that I had when we were kids. Not that I would ever stop loving him but I need to be ok with the fact that we are different people with very different paths and those paths may not cross and lead to where I would like them to. The love I have for him should be turned into the love I have for all my friends. Finding that line is a hard journey.

I need to know that I can go out and have fun with my friends and not be afraid of turning into the out of control party girl who doesn't stand up and say no to any kind of liquor. I can have fun and not drink. I can drink and not do it in excess. I fear not what others think of me, but in all honesty I do care about the opinions of me by the people I love, but what can become of me when I don't have control over myself. 

These are all, in my opinion, legitimate fears that I have and have had before. The thing is I always feared the what if more than I feared anything else. What if I don't do this, will I regret it? I think as of late I've been living the opposite, "I don't care if I'll regret it, I just want to feel safe." The exterior illusion I put on is one of drive and ambition inside I'm scared shitless and though this isn't the first time I've been scared shitless it's the first time my internal mantra has not been "it's ok to be afraid but it's worse if you don't try," my current mantra stops at "it's ok to be afraid." 

As of late I've waxing more concrete and less organic. The whys and the internal workings have been the things I'm placing more value on, less fly by the seat of your pants and more flying in the seat of an airplane. Everything seems to work out best when you find the mean, the place in the middle between the two that's a healthy dose of both. The problem is the middle means giving up something on both sides. Do you jump off the cliff and fall or do you sit on the side of the cliff and just look down? Where is the half way between falling and sitting? Falling with the aid of a safety net? But then doesn't the whole vicious cycle start all over again?

The questions and worries that I have that keep me up, make me sick, and make my hair fall out are the ones that need to be answered before I fall but they seem like unanswerable questions. It's as if I'm standing in front of the sphinx and the riddle that I have to answer to pass is so overwhelming that I can't do anything but sit down and stare at where I cannot go. It gets hard to find the strength to keep the sphinx from devouring me. 

This is what life is though, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." We come across detours, forks in the road, a mindless maze of paths and roads. Ever decision has a consequence and an outcome. The problem with life is that it keeps moving you forward and the decision on what path to walk becomes hard and the consequences greater. There is nothing you can do to stop it, it's like the moving screen in a Nintendo game, if you quit moving Mario forward, the screen with do it for you and you will run into an obstacle and die or you will pick it up and start moving yourself again. 

Life does not stop when you refuse to move, when you refuse to make a decision, you just cease to exist. Then it is life that controls you and not you making the choices that control your life. Then again brain and heart are two very different organs. Rational thought and discovery may be capable but if the soul is still paralyzed with fear or reluctance you are trapped in a body the screams for movement but refuses to move. How to sync the two may be a much more appropriate question.