The Stress is Killing Me.

I am just a girl. A girl who goes to school, works two jobs, walks her dog, and loves her Scott. And frankly, everything I love is killing me. The stress of just keeping up has buried me and I am starting to show the wear and tear of weary days and long nights.

I am starting to do what I used to do to myself. When I was a crazy kid, bogged down by all of the expectations of teacher, parents, and friends, the stress of upholding my goody-two-shoes, smarty-pants reputations, and the daily rhythm. I am starting to doubt myself. I hate this. I hate this feeling like life is running by me and everyone is seeing something at a speed which I simply do not function; a frequency I was simply not born for.

I am not a action movie, I am a slow foreign film with subterfuge, abstruse theories and long, organic scenes involving the protagonist and their private miseries becoming public.

I am writing this blog, for instance, for myself. To catalog time and group instances of greatness in my life. But it is no greatness. It is a body of writing that will melt away when I am gone, or be used as a general stamp of our times and era. People may find it, years to come, as a useful morsel of the "Internet Age" and make it an example that people would write or say anything in this open format, pretending to be more important than they were.

And That is what I am doing. I am pretending that all of this life is important. Pretending that I feel like continuing on, doing what I have always done, achieving what I have always achieved, growing the way I have always grown. I write this blog, I paint this picture, I pass this test, I log time in an office, I serve this food. I do this life. I do it and I do it and I do it until I see no meaning in the sum of what I have done.

Will you remember that I painted that in your old age, when the paint has faded and the colors seem less rich?

Will you read this, or re read this in search of something applicable to your life, to make you feel like someone existed on the same vibrations as you?

Will you know my accomplishments and be proud of them?

Or am I playing out this long, lonely story on an empty stage to an empty auditorium, while others have a full audience and roses at their final curtain call?

Life is not for the Grown.

It is for the growing.

I tend to have this idea that I am grown up and done learning. And then the first day of school comes and it is followed by more days, and notes, and exams, and modules, and books, and study groups, and powerpoints, and class times, and orientations, and web forums. Then there is homework and meetings, and clinicals, and the juggling act.

And then I realize this is all there will ever be.

This rushing around to meet deadlines. This asking a hundred questions just to keep in tune with the flow of the conversation. This feeling like I am just floating on the surface, just keeping myself up, pedaling just enough to keep with the pack.

And it feels like life. It feels like vibrance and shifting motion. It feels like the race.

An Ending of Sorts; Begining a New Course

I have found you. Or I would have found you, if you weren't already dead. Somehow I always knew, or thought I knew, or felt that I knew that this would be more dramatic than this. That there would be more than this. But this is the end and the end is all there is.

All my fervent wishing that you were or would be longing for me somewhere far or near with happiness or disappointment is over. I thought that the worst would be that you were busy loving someone else like I was sure I deserved to be loved. But that wasn't the case, and, as it turns out, that wasn't even the worst case.

You are gone, dead, and not just a fake dead where I am allowed to choose the terms. Not just a "You are dead to me, sir. I want you not." Dead as in never to breathe again. Dead as in never to see, never to hear, never to want, never to dream. Dead. Not even a cold, long, sad dead. Just a clean, ashen, gone dead.

And I am so disappointed.

I feel as though I have been cheated. You owed me so much and now your dead. You owed me so much and you didn't even have time to know what I deserved. The end of you was and is and always will be and I am still here and still have no way to say or see or know anything of you. And I am so disappointed. So cheated. So bereft. So angry.

I am a good kid. I always was a good kid. Sure, I throw temper tantrums. Sure, I had an awkward adolescence. Sure, I am flawed. But there is so much in me that warrants notice. There is so much in us all that you should have seen.

I know that you are not worth all of this. I know that you are just some illusion, some ethereal mist that I shouldn't concern myself with. But now I will never know. I will never get to make that decision myself. I will never get to look you in the eye and call you a cad- a coward- a cur. I will never get to cry to you, to plead with you, to hear your reasons and your pathetic excuse.

All I truly have now, at the end of this lifelong search for you- at the turning point when questions are answered and answers must be dealt with accordingly, and feelings must be cataloged and owned, and condolences allowed, and pride must surface to buoy the soul- all I have now is me. I get up and I look at my reflection, the reflection that seeing you was supposed to clear and restore in some way, and all I see is me.

A flawed, but completely whole, me.

And the only one to hear my complaints and deal with my tears and hold back my anger is me.

Young, disappointed, cheated me.

And what shall I allow myself? How shall I feel about you today, since you are not here to gauge my emotions, to approve or deny, to hide or to appear? Shall I remain forever hurt? Shall I remain forever tied to the idea that you could not love me, who in the world would?

No. I am not of you. I am just me. Whole, without you. Whole, even though I hurt. Whole, and sufficient.

I can be the best me, without you.
I am the best me, without you.
I am me, without you.
I am me; without you.