Endings

It is the end of my freshman year of college. I am glad to be done but a little bit sad that another year has passed so quickly. Physically and emotionally I need to be somewhere different. I need this time to myself, to try to revert to some of my old habits that I thought were bad. I underestimated the importance of protecting myself in an attempt to become the person I thought I needed to be. I am excited to start new things over the summer and have time with my family. I will write more later when I feel words coming together in my mind in a way that I can transmit to paper. (or in this case, to blog)

Con Afectos,
ERS

Rules to Live By (Alternate Title: Things I Should Remember)

• Think about yourself and what makes you happy, prioritize that above all else
• Remember who you are, where you came from, and what you've been through to get where you are today
• Don't be so scared all the time
• Don't dwell on things out of your control, anxiety helps no one
• Have emotions, but do not let them consume you
• Take time to do the things you enjoy
• Take walks alone, play music, get out of your head
• Call your family, especially on the days when you feel like it the least
• Write long e-mails (or letters!) to your friends
• It isn't your responsibility to fix anyone (Also: It isn't anyone else's responsibility to fix you)
• Don't be too hard on yourself
• Write. Even when you can't think of anything useful to write about, keep doing it.
• Plan fabulous summers or roadtrips across the country that you may never take. (It's a more realistic way to fulfill your fantasies of running away)
• Be a good friend, understand others
• Don't lose sight of why you are here (in college)
• Make smart choices
• Take care of your sister the best way you can (definitely me-specific)
• Only take on what you are sure you can handle
• It's okay to always be the one who cares more. Stop seeing caring about other people as a character flaw, but rather as a source of strength. 

A Scattered Collection of Morning Musings

I wonder if other people wake up  feeling heavy, like getting out of bed is almost not worth it because of the potential crap you will have to deal with and the potential for failure during the day. Am I the only one constantly preoccupied with how others feel about me? Is my fear of isolation unjustified? I acknowledge my insecurity regarding other people as crippling, but what does this acknowledgement mean if I feel powerless to fight it? Powerlessness is never something I have been terribly good at dealing with. In situations where I feel like I have no control, I tend to take control.

For example, if I really like someone and I'm scared that they will not feel the same way or scared that they will eventually leave me, I  push them away. It's a little bit twisted, but at least I can tie their negative feelings towards me to specific actions that I've done or words that I've said. Other people tend not to look past the surface meaning of my words and they never understand my decidedly neurotic behavior. This makes it easy for me to manipulate them into hating me or at the very least being confused about what sort of person I am. Although  I sometimes pretend to be an idiot, I am rather intelligent. I understand how people work. This is not an exact science, but it's accurate most of the time. I know what makes people tick. I know how to get under their skin and drive them away. Of course, being manipulative is bad, as most ethical people will tell you, but I openly admit to this flaw because it ends up not really harming anyone besides myself.

I'm sure that this characteristic of mine is deviant from the norm; I can't imagine people having successful relationships with others with this kind of behavior. I don't have a real justification for it either. Perhaps it is a deep rooted Freudian problem that I will fish out after a few years of therapy, or maybe my personality is too vulnerable to emotional pain and this is some callused defense mechanism I have developed and convinced myself is acceptable, as long as I am protected. However, I don't want to be this way forever. I want to be able to feel something without simultaneously being scared of it. I try to convince myself that eventually I will meet people who make me feel secure about being liked. I have met some people like this, but after graduating from high school, it has been challenging to remind myself of that security without their constant presence.

I want liberty from insecurity. I want to be sure that I am safe and I want to be sure that I am liked - I don't really require an excess of love at this point. I want to be sure that I will not be abandoned. Although there are some people who can give me those feelings for an instant, it doesn't feel like enough. I'm not sure if the problem here is personal - if I am the one  who wants / needs too much - or if it is situational - I haven't met the type of person who can ensure my emotional security. This is a bad time for my head to be full of thoughts pressing against each other, building up explosive pressure that I cannot allow myself to release until after exam week.

So what are good things I can dwell on now to crowd out the crazy things going on in  my mind? I can focus on seeing my family, on having freedom to do what I want with my summer, on the possibility of seeing my high school friends no matter how hard it might be to organize, going to Georgia with the crew team and the time on my own to write and think. Maybe I can rid myself of some negativity and get a handle on my emotions. Hopefully I will understand what I want from other people, and what kind of emotional security I require to be genuinely happy. I need to stop looking in the wrong places to find inner peace, but in order to do that I will need to stop for a while and take a few moments to breathe and cut myself some slack for my imperfections.

Dad Vails Regatta

I am leaving for another regatta this weekend. I have been too busy to think, let alone keep up with regular posts. This week has been a difficult one for me, but I think I'm slowly discovering that there are people who will put up with my "bullshit" (as I call my fluctuating emotions) and maybe people who even (dare I say it?) care about the fact that I'm upset.

It's difficult for me to pin point what exactly has me so tense right now. I have some ideas about it but none of these ideas are particularly pleasant for me to admit to. I'm in an interesting place right now. I am willing to admit to some emotions, but it's difficult for me to accept the full range of them as a part of who I am.

This weekend will hopefully be a time to get away from everything going on in my brain and separate myself from whatever confusion I feel. Of course, escape from my fears is not a practical permanent solution, but perhaps a temporary escape will help me figure out what I want. I am tired of being so upset all the time and tired of  feeling trapped by overpowering feelings and my outward tendencies to suppress them. I want to be distracted by the sun on my back and the feelings of powerful girls pushing the eight forward with an incredible strength that I could only dream of having. I use crew as a distraction and coxing as a way to force myself into confidence that I rarely feel. Hopefully distracting myself with something I am certain that I love will help me understand what happiness feels like and understand what I need to do to find it. 

New Englands

I spent this weekend near my old stomping ground in Worcester Mass at Lake Quinsigamond to race Middlebury women's novice eight. The race went fantastically, although there were some mishaps before hand, in the end everything turned out fine and we won bronze overall, becoming the first Middlebury eight to medal overall. Here are a couple of pictures of me looking weird while everyone else in my boat looks like a normal human being. I will write more later on a specific topic, but this is just an update of where I've been this past weekend.

Quinsigamond - New Englands

This weekend I am headed to New Englands to race with the women's novice crew. I like them a lot and I am excited for the experience but for some reason a night away from campus has me excessively nervous. I'm worried that I will mess something up and ruin the race for them. I'm worried that I'll be too cold because all my clothing will be soaked and I won't have brought enough. I'm terrified that something will happen during the race to ruin all their hard work. I'm scared that I'll miss something important happening on campus. I'm scared that I'll fail to follow the traffic pattern and the coaches will be mad at me.

This is a picture of what life is like in my head. It's perpetually stressful. I am perpetually mulling over things that could go wrong or things that are outside of my control. I want to be free of this constant worry and I'm learning how to deal with it. I'm learning how to tackle the worst case scenario mentally and then think of ways to conquer the worst case scenario and control it.

So, I'm oddly filled with dread about this weekend for what seems to be nothing specific, but upon further examination is a slew of too specific horrific scenarios that I can't shake free. And of course, on top of all of this, I put this pressure on myself to recall the better days I've had. I remember times when all this stress could have easily gone away because I would have had someone there to console me and protect me against my negativity. I remember the days when I didn't have to fight my neuroses alone and just the recollection of that is enough to accelerate my downward spiral.

The Marriage Obsession

In my Arabic class this morning we were translating an article from an Egyptian women's magazine that was about a woman who was having trouble in her marriage because her husband spent too many months away. My Arabic teacher then asked about who wanted to get married in the future and to my surprise more than 60% of the class raised there hands. I was surprised and a little bit terrified. 

I think that I'm a little bit too young to be thinking about marriage. I also think that it's a ridiculous goal to have. I imagine that it will be possible for me to get married at some point, but it's the kind of thing I don't plan on happening. It feels ridiculous to plan on being married before meeting someone who you are certain that you want to spend the rest of your life with. 

I refuse to feel bad for not wanting to be married. I don't think this makes me pessimistic or cold hearted to not think of marriage as some kind of requirement for a fulfilled life. Of course, I am terrified of loneliness but I don't want to set lofty expectations for my future. I don't want to be thirty or thirty-five and feel some kind of pressure to be wed. To me, ending up married to the wrong person is far worse than remaining alone for a long time. 

Don't take this to mean that I am waiting for the "perfect guy" to begin contemplating marriage. I generally scoff at the idea of a "perfect" person, and I am fatally attracted to imperfections anyway. I just don't think that I should be contemplating or obsessing over marriage until I find someone who I am certain I could work things out with for  a number of years who feels the same way that I do. This recent obsession with marriage that everyone around me seems to have is terrifying and needs to be stopped. Let's not put more pressure on ourselves than we already have to deal with.