Livin’ The Dream

It started out as a joke that whenever someone would ask how I was, I’d respond with “livin’ the dream!” Only now if you know me, you know that when I get down time and get into my head, I wonder some really deep almost philosophical shit. I’m not sure what brought this on tonight, but I’m sitting here wondering how do you know when you’re actually living the dream?
It’s easy to say it when you’re joking and you’re actually working towards your dream, but do we ever wake up one day or look around our world and realize we are actually living it?
Here’s what my dream looks like:
Have my degree in clinical psychology/mental health counseling
Have a job as a psychologist
Own my own place
Have a gentleman caller in my life (yeah, I called a boyfriend a gentleman caller so deal with it).
I’d say my dream is pretty black and white. Right now I’m starting my senior year of undergraduate (eegats! so exciting!), working two jobs to get by and all the while keeping my eye on the prize. I know what my dream is, what the end game is but like with a lot of things in my life, I wonder if I’ll even realize it when the time comes.
Do we ever really live the dream? I mean, time moves so incredibly fast that I feel like half the time I don’t realize the significance of things until they’re just a memory. What if instead of living the dream, I’m missing out on parts of my life right now that were once a dream to me? Bare with me here guys, I know this is all getting to be some Twilight Zone thinking shit in here.
The fact that I’m even in college (and doing well might I add) is a dream come true, but it took me sitting down to write this to realize it and have it hit me. Shit, the fact that I’m alive is a dream. If you know my story you know the meaning behind that last sentence, but my past dream was to live a life of being happy, confident and motivated. To 20 year old Jess, this time of my life is a dream.
I’ve muttered the phrase “livin’ the dream” countless times over the past few years, but I never really meant it. We live in a constant state of future chasing. In different times of our life the end game can change drastically, and as we get older we see it alter greatly. So I guess to answer my own question here (sorry, us psychology majors who love research do this all the freakin’ time!), it takes reflection of your past self to realize if you are living the dream or not. Only it’s not living the dream, as much as it is living a dream; because let’s be real, you’re dream life a few years ago is more than likely not the dream life you wish for now.

Free Write- Poetry

Sometimes I feel like a grenade.

My trigger has been pulled,

and I know the explosion is coming.

When will it come? When will I explode

into millions of tiny pieces, hitting everything around me

with fragments of the shell I was.

The built up pressure continues rising inside me

after the pin is yanked.

Who is holding this weapon in their hand,

knowing all too well the damage it will cause others?

There’s no time to think about the consequences now.

It’s too late. There’s only seconds left

Until I detonate and take out everyone who’s in reach.

A split second of fear kicks in as I know the pain I am about to cause.

There’s no turning back though.

I can no longer control this anger,

This thirst for making others feel just as shitty as I do.

After I release my fury, I know I will have victims hit with the shrapnel of my anger.

There’s more to lose, and more underneath this explosion than I have ever let on.

Sometimes, I feel like a grenade

The Unknowns

I have never been good at the whole letting my guard down and letting people in. To be honest, my track record with it has been shit and I realized that if you keep a distance nobody can hurt you. Do you want to know how that works out? Not well. I become like this island, where the only thing keeping me company is that ever so familiar swirling darkness. Pain is almost like a friend of mine, or was, I don’t even know any more. All I know, is that pain (depression,anxiety and what have you) is consistent. Yes, it hurts like hell, but when you get accustomed to it always being there, there’s never a let down of it walking out of your life.

Relationships in my life have always been inconsistent. I guess those are the key words for this post: consistent and inconsistent. That guard I talked about is a result of said inconsistent relationships. Not in the romantic sense, but in the more personal sense with friends who I considered myself close with. I love the quote from One Tree Hill that says “people always leave”; I found it to be true and even when I realized it, the pain caused by their absence from my life never alleviated. It was always those who I managed to let my guard down with that ended up leaving, and each time it got harder and harder to not shift the blame inwardly. None of the people this is referring to have come back into my life yet… except for one.

What brings all of this out tonight is my ex-boyfriend. He, like the rest of those I tried letting in, left. It hurt like hell, especially after last time. We were broken up for a few months when I decided I needed to talk to him, because I missed him. That conversation turned into us making plans to catch up. I cancelled my plans I could have had that night, and I was so excited to see him again, but here’s the kicker. He stopped talking to me that whole week. So I asked for an explanation, and he rescheduled, only to once again stop communication with me. I was crushed, I felt not good enough and not wanted. This one I turned inwardly on myself. There had to be something wrong with me for him to lead me on like that.

So imagine my surprise when I received a message from him this week. Of course I couldn’t be mad at him, I didn’t/don’t have the emotional energy to be upset. We have been talking daily since then, and this time he asked if we could meet up some night this week. To be honest, I want to go so badly, but with this time I am not expecting anything. I don’t expect for this night to actually come to pass. Maybe I like being emotionally manipulated, maybe I don’t do well on my own, or maybe subconsciously I am looking for an excuse to spiral downwards. Whatever it is, I don’t know what this is going to be become.

That guard I let down with him is back up. I can’t get myself to reopen my heart to him, because I lost that trust I had for him when he blew me off (yet he continues telling me he misses seeing me). I don’t know if he’s playing me again, and that scares me to death, especially if we do actually meet up and I go right back to those feelings I had for him before.

Not knowing how something is going to turn out was never my thing. I’m a planner and scheduler, so this whole situation is new to me, yet I continue to talk to him all day because the feelings I have for him are coming back.

I’m probably going to regret this in a week or so, but who knows.

This Slippery Slope

I’ve been asking myself a lot this past week how I’ve let myself get back to this point. Back to the point of being terrified of anything resembling a full meal, of making sure I stay constantly moving throughout my days and going for a 4 mile walk after I eat dinner, weighing myself every day and the days I don’t I feel anxious, isolating myself from friends because I am too fucking exhausted after working all day to move (yet I still somehow manage to go out and walk).
How could I have been this stupid? I know what I was doing wasn’t the right thing to do, but stupid me thought I could pull back out of these behaviors but we all know how fucking powerful that voice in your head is.
I feel so dumb, but in the distorted mind that is me, I also feel really fucking powerful. I guess that’s what it all boils down to: having power.
Power over what? I don’t fucking know, but the will I had to skip meals and go without nutrients makes me feel almost superhuman. God I am so fucking stupid.
Maybe it’s because my friend died, maybe it’s because I can’t shake the grief from losing my Grandma, maybe it’s because when my ex-boyfriend called it quits with me I fell apart more than I was willing to admit because I was hiding behind the shield of anger. Whatever it is, there’s been this whole inside me my whole life that these self-destructive behaviors fill. My ex filled it, and then it ended. I was falling in love (at least I think I was) and I’m starting to think us breaking up was somehow my fault. I’m taking blame for what is probably his shit but I feel like maybe there was something wrong with me.
These thoughts don’t make sense, but neither does relapsing back into my eating disorder after almost 6 months of recovery.
I feel so stupid. I should be stronger than this.