I have avoided writing a serious post in this blog for months. It's evident by my lack of frequency and the simple, nice but unnecessary anecdotes that I tried to convince myself were enough to keep an accurate account of my life.
A while ago, on Twitter, I made the comment that I don't just keep a blog for myself, but so that when my children are old enough, they will have a physical avenue for finding out who their mom really is. I want to not only tell my children that I know of their hardships, their trials and their struggles but to open up a page of a book and allow them to read exactly what I was thinking. Perhaps they will walk away stunned with embarrassment...("Oh my God, my mother was a virgin bride?"), or maybe they'll be shocked by my values... ("Oh Lord, she's one of those liberals.")...It might be that they're shocked by who I mention, "Oh dear LORD, she knew Lukas when he was OUR age?" and I pray that it's never, "Who's this Ethan guy she mentions 30485908 times?"
No matter their reactions, I want it to be there. For when I'm alive, as a reference. For when I'm gone, as a reminder.
But for a few months I've tried to sugar coat things and I've left out a lot. Not that I'm using my future kids as an excuse, but writing things down and hitting, "Publish Post" seems so final. If I just talk about things casually, or not at all, maybe they aren't really real... but the journalist inside of me reminds me that once it's written, published and read, well, it's official.
By not writing things down, perhaps, I tried to convince myself, I could truly omit them. Maybe I'd forget them and when I looked back on this year, I would only see the good. That isn't fair though. It isn't fair to my kids who will read this, my friends who have had to see me at my worst or myself. So I write.
When I got back from New Orleans in August, I was on cloud nine. I had just gotten engaged to Ethan, I came home to a completely purged bedroom and bathroom that was clean and organized, school hadn't started yet for the fall semester and I was convinced that I was going to start dieting and exercising and losing weight. I told myself that I was thankful that my best friend and new fiancé would be in different cities because it would give me time for "me". I would get so much more accomplished, I thought. I tried to tell myself, and I succeeded for a while, that if I was alone, I would have no one to blame for failure but myself. And if I were completely dependent on myself, I would never fail.
It didn't take long, though, for me to realize that I had created an unreasonable ideal of an idealistic situation in my head. For every ounce of me that is anti-social, there's an equal ounce that requires stimulation. For every hour that I crave solitude, there is an equal hour that I crave companionship.
I'd be kidding myself if I said I made friends easily. I just don't do it. I have a few friends that I love dearly, and aside from that, I'm relatively alone. In elementary school (though that was a long, long time ago) I was ridiculously social. Even into middle school, I maintained a tight social group. I did lots of things that kept me busy; swimming, softball and cheer leading with numerous clubs and academic activities throughout the years. I immersed myself in schoolwork to avoid my home life, and it paid off tremendously.
When I got to high school, things changed so dramatically. My best friend was Katie and to this day, I blame that friendship on my inability to make friends easily. It wasn't her fault necessarily, but at fourteen, I was more hurt by what her and her then-boyfriend did to me than I had ever truly been before.
She was 14 and had been dating a mutual friend, when she met a senior who was everything she had thought she would ever need. He was attractive, older and interested in her. Flash-forward a few months, and she was pregnant. She didn't tell me right away, but I found out from an ex-girlfriend of his and confronted her, first she denied it, then she reluctantly admitted it. I tried to be supportive.
Katie had always wanted to be part of the "popular" crowd, and as soon as the word got out, they momentarily embraced her and did much of what I wanted to be able to do for her. They threw her a baby shower, to which I wasn't invited to, and stepped into the "best friend" role nicely. As the months went out, she drew away from me, my other friends stopped talking to me and I felt so isolated. In the middle of all of this, I took a class that literally ruined my entire year. I was a Teen Living class and the girls in there hated me. I was more outspoken than most, but I tried to stay to myself. My teachers liked me, but that only made me more of a target. I will never forget that almost twice a week, we played "battleship" in groups. No matter what group I went in, my group was always targeted. No one ever wanted me in their group, and students would literally yell at me and threaten me if I tried to sit with them. My teacher did nothing about it. I don't know if it counts as bullying or not, but I had never been so miserable. I felt jaded, alienated. I went home crying almost every day.
I found out later that Katie’s boyfriend had spread a rumor about me; the details don't matter. If the rumor had been true, I would have hated me too. It killed my spirit for a long time.
After that, it was incredibly hard to make solid friends, and it still is. I never trusted.
Flash-forward to today, and I’m still timid and select. I’ve made few, close friends over the years but I can’t seem to find a friend group that I fit in with. I go to L-R almost every day, talk to many, many people and yet, I’m still incapable of forming strong bonds, even weak bonds, with people.
So when the two most important people around me left, within weeks of each other, I sort of began to fall apart. It wasn’t that they were gone that bothered me. And it still doesn’t. It’s their ability to have exactly what I want that gets me every time. I’d like to say that I’m not jealous at all that one has a family who’s practically paying for their education, but I’d be lying. I’m extremely jealous. I try so hard not to get caught up in what I think I deserve versus what I actually have, but there are times my selfishness gets the best of me and settle for, “it just isn’t fair”.
I could also try and say that it doesn’t bother me that the other, who didn’t really care about school and barely wants to even obtain a college degree, is getting exactly what I want. Granted, he deserves every ounce of education that the military is will to pay for, but it kills me sometimes because I see what he’s got and how he isn’t truly taking advantage of it. I think about how, if it were I, I’d do things so differently. I’d be more social, join more things, go more places… but he doesn’t do any of it. I pray he doesn’t regret it.
September came and instead of being able to focus on the positives, I’ve been nothing but immersed in the negative. I’ve felt more alone in the past 6 weeks than I have felt in years. An inconvenience at best, my company is not one that is often sought after and after years and years of struggling, I’ve started to just give up.
Every ounce of sadness that I ever experienced, it seems, has flooded back to me in the past few months. The pain from my grandmother’s death, the sadness of not having a father around… things that should have long-ago been resolved are fresh, as if they happened last night.
I go home every night by myself, and I cry. I look forward to nothing. I’ve made myself aware of the fact that I’m pushing people away. My best friend, caring and compassionate at times, frustrated and justifiably irritated at other times, has got to be close to exhausting his efforts at showing me that I’m not nearly as alone as I feel. Ethan, God love him, doesn’t particularly understand what I’m going through and sees no real problem in being by yourself most of the time. He prefers solitude. A homebody by nature, he doesn’t mind the one thing that drives me to the brink of insanity.
I am insanely sensitive at the moment. A wrong look, and I melt. A few days ago, I was feel awful. I wanted nothing more than to be alone. I ended up playing games with three people whom I should feel the most comfortable around. I couldn’t manage it. I wanted to escape the situation so badly. I kept getting “skipped” just for the hell of it; it brought back nothing more than the memories of my battleship being sunk.
The following conversation, that should have just made me laugh, left me in tears.
Him: “You realize you just got skipped twice, right?”
Me: “No, I got skipped once…”
Him: “No, you took your skip but then you let us skip you a second time.”
Me: “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Him: “Because I didn’t want you to win?”
I excused myself, saying I needed to charge my phone. I cried. I wanted to go to bed, so badly. I wanted to just curl up and not come back out. I dried my eyes; finished the night, and I felt nothing more than a desire to never be called again.
I long for the random texts from my friends that used to make my days, but are now far and few between. Busier lives than mine, I understand why they’re missing. I also don’t want them. I roll my eyes at phone calls. I hate face book for reminding me of what I’m missing, and I love it for keeping me connected in the least little reassuring bit.
I dread seeing my friends, but I look forward to it. I hate how I don’t have a friend group. I hate how I have best friends but I’m not apart of their real life. I’m apart of a small portion. When did I let myself become so secluded?
I look forward to marriage, moving to Charlotte and prayerfully starting over. But I’m terrified. What if it doesn’t happen? What if I move there, and I’m even more alone than I am now? What if I lose the last bit of connection I have to my best friends here, and I’m completely isolated?
The anxiety, alongside the depression, has sent me into the darkest time I can remember. I hate it. I love it. I want to learn from it, but I want it to go away. I embrace it and find it comfortable, yet it’s miserable. It’s the same reason I hate my birthday. Why? Because it’s just another day. A day I typically spend by myself. Such an accurate representation of my everyday life, it’s an occasion that deserves to be memorialized the same way its predecessors have been celebrated.
I’m jealous, envious, tired, exhausted and hitting rock bottom at a speed that makes me uncomfortable. I’m certain that I’m replaceable, isn’t everyone? I know that I’m expendable. I realize that if I keep this up, another Olivia will pop up – or have they already? – into the lives of others and then, I will be more alone than I image I am at the current moment.
And I am logical at the same time.
I have friends, but I have fake friends, too. I have friends that love me and friends that call me only when something is going wrong, like a boyfriend that's broken up with them. I have friends that call to brag about things, call for comfort or call to waste their time. And I have real friends too.
I realize that most of this is unnecessary. I realize that if I stepped back and truly examined the situation, I wouldn’t be so sad. I would cry less tears. But I’m tired of being logical. I’m tired of having to be strong, and independent. I hate being in control, but I love it. I need direction, but I can’t take it. My guard is up and walls are built. I’m not sure how to tear them down.
I’m not sure that I want to. But I know that I want to.
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