In Other Words

You know that feeling you get when you’re angry with your life and the world? The one that makes you sick of everything, that makes you feel like simultaneously roaring with your entire being and crying with what little is left of your sapped energy?

You know that feeling, the one that makes you want to fiercely, viciously rip the skin suit from your body, like unzipping a snowsuit, and step out of it, makes you want to rent the fabric of this world and leap into another, desperate to escape the endless cycle, anxious for something different?

At the same time you feel contradictorily spent, as though all the energy you have would be to simply pop the bubble that is your little life, the one that sometimes joins and sticks to other bubbles but ultimately feels as though it’s your very own and that either you don’t have the power to control its path, or you do and you’re not doing a very good job of it.

You know that feeling? That one that makes you want to flip the finger to the sickeningly repetitive upbeat self-help encouragement? The one that tells you you can change your life if only you forget yourself and change your thinking? The kind that tells you “all you have to do is…”? The kind that says “you can do it too if only…”? The kind that seems to say it’s all your fault, this life, it’s all you, and if it sucks, you have only yourself to blame? The kind that tells you no matter how earnest, how innocently expectant, how visualizing, optimistic, and positive you are, if there’s still no change, you must not want it badly enough, or else there is something in your subconscious that is screwing with you?

You know that feeling you get when you hear all that shit? That’s how I feel today. I know, I know, I know, I say. I know what I’m supposed to do. But. And it’s that but that makes me want to erase this post. That but can be used against me to explain my cyclical life. I know. But I won’t erase this post, because it’s okay to have a bad day.

And then suddenly I think, I was so much better off when I didn’t know any of this crap. I’m supposed to feel empowered. But now all I feel is anxious, guilty, stressed, responsible, anguished, frustrated, and ultimately angry. Why did things have to get so complicated? Now everything bad is all my fault.

Self-help sucks. It sucks because it’s hard, because I can’t do it, and because now I feel like a failure and hyperaware of everything I do and think. It sucks because I like to be good at everything and I’m not good at any of it. It sucks because I feel like it’s my fault that we’re in our situation, because I can’t think right. It sucks because ironically it makes me feel more a victim than I ever have before, makes me feel as though everything is unfair. How come some people can just do it and others struggle at it forever? And it sucks because I can’t find God in the quagmire of my “self-help journey.” But I also can’t find him when I’m believing he’s the one in charge and not me. Where the hell is the in between?

Self-help sucks because it’s telling me that I’m having all these never-ending same issues because part of me is perpetuating them, for all I think of what I want instead. But I’m tired of this cliché crap! And I am tired of feeling hopeful only to have hopes dashed, optimistic only to see the cynical side of things, expectant only to be disappointed. I’m tired of happily visualizing what I want but then seeing nothing change. I’m tired of trying to relinquish control or, contrarily, trying to take it. I.am.tired.of.the.same.old.shit. I am having panic attacks about it, about being trapped and powerless.

I don’t know how to be anything other than me the way I am. I’m the kind of person who sees what she wants and then thinks she has to do something to get it. I have to take control. But it doesn’t often work, and apparently this is because most of the struggle is in the mind. In other words, I can do all I want but if my mind isn’t a 100% on board (even if I feel it is, it probably isn’t. There’s some furtive, elusive thought in there telling me something negative), things aren’t going to work out. At least, this is what self-help tells me.

If it’s stubborness that’s my issue, I don’t know how to give it up. If it’s years of bad influence, I don’t know how to unlearn it. If it’s wrong thinking, I don’t know how to think any other way. I thought I was an intelligent kid, but this kind of enlightenment makes me immature, whiny, and frustrated, not more adept at life. Whatever the problem is, self-help teaches me that nothing will change unless I fix it: unless I think a certain way and don’t give up.

I know I’m whining. I know I’m being negative. I know this is not helping me. Honestly, I don’t want to be stuck. I want quite the opposite, and always have. I’m just so tired of trying to get things right and failing, of expecting and being hopeful only to be disappointed.