WBB ESSAYS
Recovery Achieved by Taking Life as it Comes
- By Hazel
Dinner last night was surpsingly really good. I had fettucine primavera because everything else was seafood or contained garlic (which I'm apparently allergic to now). I didn't eat the whole thing, but I ate most of it. Thankfully the portions weren't humongous. There was birthday cake, but it was only a small cake and there were like 14 people there, so I had a tiny piece. I would have declined it but I went to the bathroom and it was on my plate by the time I got back. Also, because my friend told me I had to try it because it was so good.
I didn't feel bad about it at all...but I'm going to this place called Su's Mongolian for lunch with my "chemsters" (friends from my chem ap lab group last year). I hate going out to eat for lunch, because at least when I go for dinner I know how to gauge what to eat beforehand. Plus, everyone eats a ton, so I often eat more than I should. I hate not knowing what and how many calories are in food. Especially at restaurants, where there are so many hidden calories. I know I shouldn't worry about it. It's not like everyone who eats out is fat, but I can't help but worry. I think it's more of an ocd-like tendency...but my doctors don't seem to believe me. Society and the media have made calorie counting and weight watching so normal and expected, that an inability to stop worrying about these things doesn't seem to be a problem even to trained professionals. Maybe I'm just being a hypochondriac.
I only have 4 more days of break, and I have done almost no calculus studying. When I haven't been feeling sick, I've been way more busy than I usually am. I haven't even seen any of my friends this break, apart from seeing Eric on Sunday night for a few hours.
I wanted to do so much, too. Like start going to the gym again, start my senior project, see friends...but all I've managed to do is sleep way too much and read.
Eric said I should use some of my xanga entries (from my more public xanga) to base some pieces of my senior project after. I barely write in it anymore. Not about anything consequential, that is. Now that I'm a happier person, I don't feel the need to be philosophical all the time. I have nothing new to say. Stepping back too much to reflect on random aspects of life is good, but not when it becomes too calculated. I want to be spontaneous, not the perfectionist that I've been for so long. There's nothing else to say that I haven't already said to myself hundreds of times. It was like this while I was writing my college essays. I've heard my own stories so many times that I can't possibly understand why they would be of any importance to anyone else. Supposedly I am inspiring person, but I don't see it. I'm just me: a person who has had to grow up with adversity, but has also been privileged by an environment that has not allow herself to fall into pieces.
I don't even have creative ways of saying anything anymore. I am obsessed with not sounding cliche. There is no metaphor that hasn't been used, there is no way of describing something that is totally new. Sometimes I read literature that is so beautifully written, but I can't find ways to incorporate it into my own writing because then my ideas would be plagiarized. I love the way Conrad writes, but I can't emulate that. It is so hard to formulate an original voice, and I have an obsession with not taking anyone else's.
Maybe it has to do with me wanting to be completely independent.
I've never wanted anyone to show me the way, because I've always felt I know better. My grandma always used to get mad at me saying that I thought I knew better than her, but I really didn't.
Well, for the most part, I did know better.
I've learned to love her in spite of everything that's happened. She is my best friend, almost. She's my best friend in every way, except I can't talk to her on an intellectual or deeply emotional level. I used to hate that, but I'm realizing that I can't expect everything from one particular person. People need more than one friend, because one friend can only offer so much. My grandma offers me love and support, and even if I've felt extremely let down by her at times, I do know that she will always be there to hold me if I go to her.
Yet this does not compromise my independence. I now have an ability to seek support and affection, because I am able to take care of myself. It's a paradox; by becoming more independent I have allowed myself to embrace being dependent on others. No one can be sane if they are completely alone.
I no longer need a direction.
I know I have the capability of pursuing whatever I want to. Prestige, which was once my sole motivator, no longer holds any meaning to me.
My dream is to one day have an apartment in either Boston, New York, Seattle, London, or Paris and have a loving, intelligent husband. This is still a bit of a lofty dream, but I honestly can't see myself living in a house in the suburbs with a nicely pruned garden and kids playing through the sprinklers during the summer. I think if I had kids, I would severely screw them up. Also, the "happy ending" is too cliche for me.
(Living in an aparment in a big city with an amazing man is also pretty cliche, but somehow I've gotten it into my mind that it is less so.)
Happiness is cliche.
So is depression. Being arrogant about disillusionment is absurd to me now. Why did I ever feel that way? I held an elitist opinion that I was more intelligent, more mature than everyone else my age because I saw the world for what it was. The world hasn't changed since, only my perspective. Being a depressed, obsessive perfectionist gives me nothing besides pain.
I was the most friendless and lonely person I had ever been.
So-called originality isn't worth it. Being perfect isn't worth anything. The futile attempt at reaching perfection has no end. I could have kept running and running toward it, but I would have only hit a brick wall over and over again. Only stupidity could have allowed me to continue such behavior.
So for now I'm just going to keep living. College acceptance letters are a month away, yet I'm not even anxious. I have a feeling I'm going to be very happy with wherever I end up going, but it's months away. I don't want to skim over the next few months in anticipation of what will happen in the future, because I can never reach the future. There is always something to wait for. Always. Once I'm in college, it'll be graduation. Then jobs, life, marraige, usually kids. Once those things are obtained, there's earning, saving, buying, retiring. After retirement, it's death.
Sometimes one or more of those objectives are not gained, but they are still expected out of life by most. There is no point in waiting for any of those things, because waiting does not make them happen. Living makes them happen, and no planning can determine when, and if, each goal will be met.
I have no clue how to end this. My posts sometimes are such long streams of conciousness that I always get to the end and wonder what the hell I wanted to say. One thought always leads to another, and another, and I can't possibly structure such thoughts into a neat package of ideas. Life isn't meant to be like that. Reflection shouldn't be either. I'm just going to take life as it comes.
- Hazel
