I am enough
I am healthy
I am safe and protected
I love my life

The mantra I write almost every day to myself in my 5 minute journal. The things that I have hammered into my head to try and make truth. Why is it that they don’t feel true? My general, overall, wellbeing is not really in question. Yes, I do feel healthy, safe, and for the most part sane and that my life is on some kind of a track. I do not feel like everything is completely off the rails, but sometimes I feel like I am completely manic. Being alone feels like drowning, being around my closest friends feels like I am suffocating them, meeting new people feels like tearing out pieces of my heart that are inevitably going to be broken. When will the vicious cycle be over. This is where I feel like I am destined to be alone.

I this the Universe’s way of telling me that I need to take another break? Am I in the wrong place? Am I doing everything wrong? When am I going to do something right? I love my work. I love the consistency in it. I love helping people. I love feeling like I matter again. I love feeling like I am doing something important and making a difference towards the greater good. But why do I feel so empty at the same time? Is it because I am pouring everything into a thing that isn’t holdable? Something I can’t go home to every night? Is that why I spent countless hours in my office before? Dreading leaving? Would I rather be in a miserable relationship than alone with myself? What does that say about me?

I watched myself from a few months ago. Completely shattered. Broken. Hurting. I hurt for that person. I cried with her. I feel parts of her still. I wonder what it would feel like to actually be chosen. To be someone’s first choice. Looking around at the seemingly happy couples. The smiling faces. Is it all a façade? Will I ever get to experience that kind of happiness? I suppose I have. In fleeting moments. I remember them, like parts of a dream. I was truly happy at certain points of my life. I really was. I am not negating those moments; they are just overshadowed by the constant hurt and disappointment that I am feeling on an almost regular basis now. When the small blips of happiness come, they are gone just as quickly. I grasp onto them, but they slip through like sand through my fingers. Like icicles through my heart, melting once they pierce me, but the pain is still there.

I hate writing about pain. I know that when you call your friends sometimes it is to complain about things or talk about what is happening in your life or cry about a boy, etc, etc. But sometimes it is to talk about the joyful things, the promotions, the babies, the engagements. I hope one day I get to experience those things from my own side. I revel in my friends’ happiness. I love hearing all the wonderful and amazing things happening in my friends’ lives. I can feel their joy and excitement. It makes me feel the same. But it is also bittersweet. In the back of my head, the nagging, when will it be my turn?

I am grateful for this life. I am so thankful to be here and be doing what I am. I just wonder if sometimes I am not doing enough. If I was meant for more. Is this all I am good for? Is this all I was made for? I will give everything I have until there is nothing left but a shell of a person made up of a million parts of a million people who took and took. I wonder what it would feel like for someone to just say that it was all going to be alright. That they weren’t leaving. They were going to stay and even though there was some darkness, they weren’t afraid.
Sometimes people say that..they are such pretty words to hear. Then my anxiety gets the better of me. I latch on to the pretty words with no actions. I hope and pray that maybe the next one will be the one that stays, but they never do. They say the right one comes when you stop looking. What if I stop and they never come? What happens when I just give up completely? What if I just give into the darkness? I don’t think I could ever let myself become as cold as some of the people who I have let enter my life. Regardless of all this pain I could never be the one to inflict it on others. That would be worse.

So I’ll just be here. Waiting, wondering, hoping that against the odds maybe one day it will happen for me. Even though my heart wanders towards things it can’t have because it is safer than trying to find someone who may reject me outrightly, at least I know what I can’t have is going to end up one way. And so maybe I have answered my own question. The safer road is the one that you know the end of. But it is also the loneliest and the one that ends up where you are the one that hurts the most.

My therapist is going to tell me that I am allowed to feel these things and simultaneously I am able to grow around the chaos. I wonder how true it is. I feel like I have learned so much, but it has made me too aware. Too aware of myself and of those around me. I sometimes see perception as reality. I don’t ask the right questions. I wonder how many people do this on a regular basis. Am I normal? I will ask her. I just want my mind to quiet. I want to trust myself, but I can’t. I don’t even know if what I am feeling is real. If I am going insane or if I am allowing my thoughts and feelings to take over and ruin things that are good because it is safer in my mind. This is why we can’t have nice things.

Maybe one day I will know what it’s like to feel safe. To feel like a normal person in my own body. In my own mind. To not have outside influence seemingly judge my every move. Maybe I will one day finally feel at peace. But for now I have to try not to descend into the madness. I have to try to ease myself. I have to try to pull myself out of this insanity because if I don’t I think I will push away every single person I love and I will really be alone. And I will have no one to blame but myself. These are the ramblings of an anxious woman. I hope you know that if you feel like this you aren’t alone. You all, always find a way to tell me what you think. But as always, thank you for listening.