Sometimes sharing isn’t caring

I recently went through a milestone of sorts and I didn’t put it on Facebook or anything so…the only people that knew were those that I told. And when I really thought about it, the number of people to potentially tell was low. There was no one. All of those friends who say they’re there for me – nowhere to be seen. I guess that I could just send a picture and tell them but…I don’t know that I want to.

I told one person and I asked how they were because I haven’t heard from them in months. They said they weren’t good. I said that I was there if they needed to vent. They said, oh yeah, I’ll definitely need you. To say that I regret asking is an understatement.  It’s not that I don’t want to be needed, just that I don’t want to be used. I don’t want to take time out of my day to console someone who doesn’t appreciate it. I’m tired of being the one that’s always there. I’m the person they come to when fucked up shit is happening. And maybe that’s what friendships are about. Sharing the bad stuff. Helping them through it. However, how can I be expected to care when I didn’t know the good stuff in the first place? I wasn’t considered worthy enough of sharing good news. I suppose I get it. It’s a selfish part of life. We want to keep the good. We have to share the bad. I’m kind of over it. I’m done consoling, done advising people when they just discard me afterwards like I’m a piece of rubbish.

I have two friends like this who dutifully do things like play me back on Words With Friends but they can’t pick up their phones and text me a simple hi. And for whatever reason, I go along with it. I don’t know. I feel like I’m being messed with but I know that would require some level of care on their parts and that clearly is not the case.

The major downside is that it makes me not want to talk to anyone. So the people that do reply end up getting nothing and I end up losing them too. It’s a vicious cycle with no end.

Such is life.

Tossed away like yesterday’s news

It feels like I only ever write on here to complain about other people, but hey, not like I post that much, right?

I stumbled across some old messages today from an old friend. It’s been four years since we last spoke and I am sure that we are two very different people now. I think in some ways the fact that we were somewhat close in age but that she was independent and living her own life made me a little resentful, although, I think that was a small part of it. I’ve learnt not to compare myself to other people. Mostly because I am kind of too old for that, but not too old to set myself on the right path. I have to believe that age is just a number that has no bearing on what I can do. So, I’m hanging in there, focusing on my own journey. 

I don’t want to talk about it

I received an email the other day from a good friend of mine. It was about a topic we have discussed numerous times. Something we both liked and then began to dislike and eventually started to laugh at. Now often, I find myself doing things for other people. Like indulging them when it comes to things that I don’t particularly want to talk about. Online fandom is something that I strive to stay away from. I think it is reaching that point where the fan/celebrity relationship is essentially a full on disguised supplier/consumer relationship, except celebrities and public figures are selling some version of their lives and fans are buying into it. That’s their choice.

For me, I am glad that I got myself out of it. However, my friend is still very much kind of involved and sometimes I don’t mind. Other times the things she says are just…irrelevent to me. It’s like, ‘hey, this person still exists and these people are still stupid LOL’ and fine, we can laugh about it, but at some point, I need to move on entirely. 

A world full of pretense

I never really know how my day is going to pan out.

Well.

Maybe I do.

There are two types of days that I have. Either it flies by – hours passing rapidly each time I look at a clock – or it drags. The days when it drags are the worse. I can sit there for what seems like hours, just thinking about life. Usually, I’m wondering if this is it. This is as good as it gets. Hope doesn’t exist for me. I’ve been sad for so long that a day of calm nothingness is something I welcome. Sadness never really goes away. The older I get, the harder it gets to pretend that I’m okay with being alone. On the other hand I don’t know how not to be alone. I have plain old anxiety, social anxiety – probably more but to me that’s normal. Being a wreck is normal. I’m tired of it. Every year I declare that this will be the year of change and every year I revert back to old habits. Shut myself away from the world. I’m scared of being burnt. So I stay away from the flickering flame that masquerades as life.

Some days, I want to live a little. See what’s out there. Show people that I’m not that quiet, weird girl.

Other days I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to join the charade or pretend that life is this amazing thing I’m missing out on. When you fade away into the background, you see things for what they are. Some might call me jaded.

Maybe I am.

But I don’t pretend. In a world full of pretenders, I’m one of the anomalies. It’s kind of fucked up because apparently that’s normal. Or society’s perception of normal. Pretending is normal.

I don’t want to squeeze myself into that box but yet, the weight of not fitting in is heavy. Tiring. It shouldn’t be this way but it is.

It’s okay to be different but only if you’re the right kind of different. All of the rules make no sense but people live by them. How they don’t find it overwhelming is a mystery to me.

Perhaps they’re pretending.

I wonder if that means that I’m tired of being real.

Hiatus

I am coming up to quite a busy time period, not that you’d know it given how much I seem to procrastinate. Anyway, so I have a blog that was initially about something. In the beginning, I got little response. I didn’t mind really, it was just a place to express myself. And then people found me and I got some attention. After a while, it went from me writing for myself to me writing for my ‘audience’. The trouble is that my audience are only interested in one thing and now I feel uncomfortable posting random silly things on it. And the original purpose of the blog has passed really. It served a purpose and I’ll always hold it in high regard.

However, I feel like a puppet master performing to an audience. So I’m moving here for the time being. I will probably go back to it but right now I need to just be able to spit out words without putting on an act and trying too hard to make it humorous. I need to be myself for once.

Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines…

I am what some would call lax towards deadlines. There’s just something about a deadline that makes me leave it so I’m panicking in the week before, rushing around as if I haven’t had months to do. The issue, I suspect, is my waning attention span. I am unfocused and prone to distraction. It’s gotten to the point where I’m sure that I waste time trying to do things on time. I can sit and stare at a blank screen for hours, months in advance, willing the words to come. Quite often, the mental plan is for me to sit in one place for a day and write or do the bulk of the task. It’s weird that the time period can be quite lengthy but my actual working hours are low. I’ve improved in recent times. What I do is start the task and do it so that it is at least half complete. I then do small bits here and there. That works with minor projects, but major ones? Not really. I’m struggling right now to just put down a simple methods and results section – arguably the easiest part of the paper. My word count is a paltry 1500 words and the full 6000-8000 draft is due in a month. I know that week before that day will be rough.

People always chide me for leaving things to the last minute despite me telling them that I don’t. And I suspect most people don’t. It just happens that those last few moments are where I’m most focused. Obviously I wish it wasn’t that way. It’s crazy and not good if you have anxiety. Things like word block usually crop up just to make you feel like shit. It is just messy. However, I like to think that the panic drives me to do well. That I’m so busy kicking my ass for running out of time that my brain opens up and pours out wisdom and excellence along with the blood and sweat.

In my mind, I’m that marathon runner who starts off slow and makes a late surge at the end.

I’m good at wasting time

So, I’m kickstarting this blog again because my other blog has become this behemoth time waster. I put time and energy into writing each post and like my charming recent foe mockingly informed me, nobody reads it. I don’t mind. But in some sense, when you’ve had a response before, it is hard not to put effort into things and now it just feels forced so I’m back here.

Right now my anxiety is THROUGH THE ROOF, SO YEAH. I’m hoping that randomly sharing my thoughts here will help with things. I’m watching a show called Copper at the moment and trying to sleep. The trouble is that I can’t sleep. And that’s just making my anxiety worse. Also I want cake, but that’s just me being quirky and weird.

Well. Until next time.

Being ignored by someone is never easy.

I have this friend. We used to speak regularly and then we didn’t. And then we added each other on whatsapp and we spoke practically every day. We maintained a somewhat regular conversation even when she started studying full time. She divulged personal things and I did too. We were pretty close I’d say.

Things changed toward the start of this year. I didn’t hear from her much and I think I reached out. She had a good reason for being  a little distant and I don’t actually mind the distance now and then.  What really gets to me is that she picks and chooses what to respond to. It’s okay if someone can’t respond right away but to not respond at all drives me crazy. There are times when I’ve needed to talk and I see that she’s seen my message but I get nothing back. It’s hurtful and worst of all, something that she’s expressed disliking in the past. Now given that she’s always been guilty of this I guess I should not be surprised. And I’m not. I am however, completely fed up of being ignored by people who claim that they’re there for you. It’s one thing to ignore a silly picture but to do it so frequently without any attempt to respond really pisses me off. Even if it took a week to reply, I wouldn’t be mad. If she didn’t reply at all I maybe would get the hint and just move on but…

…if she gets an opportunity to talk about herself, that gets the water flowing. The dam bursts and I get more than silence.