"Don't let success go to your head or failure go to your heart."
I've come to realize that I'm intensely self-critical and almost debilitatingly introspective. While I think that for some people, these qualities can be spun into positive and motivating characteristics, mostly I'm just fighting an unending war in my head, beating myself up for past doings that leave me slightly but constantly depressed and hopeless about the present and future. I know how terribly self-indulgent this all is, but with the uncertainty plaguing my own life, I find that I have become increasingly more and more so. Perhaps it is a symptom of the quarter-life crisis? I fear it is and oh, to be so cliched! Though I'm still technically two years early for the typical quarter-life, I've always been precocious in a thoughtless way, of the mindset thinking I'm ready to handle more than I actually should. I've always wished for an even temperament. One that is strong, solid, and mild in its few fluctuations - so different from my own tumultuous, internal neurosis. But after nearly a decade of this, how silly it all seems. First, wishing doesn't accomplish anything. Second, is being a little neurotic so bad? Wallowing in self-pity or self-loathing for me is what I imagine deep sea diving to be like: the murky dangers that exist in the depths of the water really can't be known prior to the journey, but what is even more terrifying and paralyzing is knowing that I have to make my way back to the surface.
After reading some inspiring stuff, I think during this free time that I have chanced upon (which one could view as horribly tragic, or as I am now choosing to think of as fortuitously liberating), I will work on forgiving myself for all of my awkward, stupid, selfish, and profoundly short-sighted behavior that I have been dwelling on for so long in order to bolster myself for the tomorrows, the next weeks, the next years. In seizing this time, I hope to quiet my head in order to heal my heart.
(photo by now voyager, via Cup of Jo)
Wow, heartbreaking post, but I think you're speaking for an awful lot of us.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to the quarterlife crisis piece. The only way I seem to find my way out of this hole now is through recreational sports.
On the other hand, I'm so glad that you're blogging! I can't tell you how much I cherish the beautiful words and images that land on my Google Reader page thanks to you.
PS Your "inspiring stuff" links are behind a protected blog line...whose blog is that?
What I learned most from the Warrior Leader Course at Ft Lewis, besides some of the intangibles and Army standards for leadership, was that it is okay for me to be who I am, dysfunctions and all.
ReplyDeleteYou people are lovely. After I read that quarterlife crisis article, I didn't understand why I almost cried... but now, retrospectively, I do. Thank you for making me feel like even though I'm caught in a slump, I still might secretly be a heroine.
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