turning nineteen

18.06.2018
And here we are again. The dreaded date on the calender, the "Happy Birthday!"s and the God, I wish they would stop. I think my last birthday was the hardest so far, but this one will come close second. My birthday is on a monday, which leaves me no chance to be with my family for my birthday. This is the first one where I'm away from home. I don't feel as awful about turning nineteen as I felt about turning eighteen, still it's not really something I can be happy about. Birthdays still suck.

It's weird how much happened in the last year. Last year around this this time I knew my deam university didn't want me but something similar to it might and I was scared even that might fall through. This time around I knew I made it into my backup university, I've been studying this for almost a year now (I had the test for it a year ago in three weeks!) and it's been going as well as it can. I have a plan for the next two years (assuming I'll finish my BA in three years total) which is quite nice, it's more than I had this time last year.
I noticed a wrinkle near my eyebrow today (it definitely comes from scrunching my nose when I wrinkle my forehead), and it scares me, not in an "Oh God I'll look old!"-way but in an "Oh God I actually am getting older."-way. I've said it a million times but I'm fucking scared of it. Growing up and growing old is really not my cup of tea.
It's 9:35am now, by this time 19 years ago I think I might have just been born (I know it's 9something, not too sure about the exact time), and I have spent the day thus far like this: I woke up at 6am because my flatmates alarm clock went off. She's at home with her family. I have no idea how to turn that awful thing off. I tried to fall asleep again until at half past 7 my brain decided that a little nightmare would be a wonderful idea! So, I've had about five hours of sleep on top of a nightmare, I went to the store at 8am to get some dirt to repot my tomatos and my strawberry plant, at the store an employee said a few things to me that made me quite uncomfortable. Great start. Really.
This all sounds very cynical. I can assure you I'm not that cynical anymore. It's gotten better. Still, birthdays are kind of meh. Tonight, I will drink a glass of wine (but not more, I have uni quite early tomorrow) and contemplate my existance. Happy fucking birthday to me.
(I promise tomorrow the world will look different and the next post should be a little more upbeat.)

about sadness

The sadness comes in waves. It crashes into me when I least expect it, when I turn my back to the sea, enjoying the water around my ankles and the sun on my face, and it throws me off balance. Just when I thought I had both feet steady on the ground it lifts me up again and makes me fight for every inch of space that seperates me from the bottom of the ocean. The sadness comes in waves, and just when I thought I'm close enough to the coast again, when people have pulled and pushed until I could stand again, it crashes into me and pulls me out again.
Just last week another wave crashed into me as I spoke somebody on the phone, and as I went back to my friends tears filled my eyes and complelte despair flooded my brain. Last week, I had a reason, but usually I don't really have one except "it hurts to exist", except my stupid fear of everything and everybody.
Sadness is a weird thing. There are so many kinds of sadness. There's the hollow, deep sadness of losing someone. The burning, painful sadness of missing someone. The kind of sadness that gnaws at your heart until you feel like you can't make it trough another day. They all have something in common though: they'll paralyse you if you don't fight them. Sure, it's okay to be sad for a day or two, in certain cases a few weeks, but you have to start fighting it at some point, and if you don't, the sadness will drown you, consume everything you thought made you who you are and leave nothing but an empty shell behind.
It's hard to fight against the tide pulling you out into the ocean. It's hard work; your muscels will hurt, your lung will scream for air, your skin will burn from the cold water, your limbs will be too stiff to move, but you have to try. You have to fight.
If you don't, the waves might drown you.

 

failure and fear

So, babes. Let's talk about failure.

For me, failure is one - if not the - scariest thing to happen. Or to might happen. I've had a huge huge struggle with failure and being afraid of it the past couple months and it's not over yet. Stupidly enough, this is a thing I can actually fail in, not just not succeed. So, how have I been dealing with it? Long story short, I haven't. Long story long: I've been crying myself to sleep, I've been crying all the time, I've made my parents and my boyfriend go crazy with worry and getting very annoyed with me because I've got this (semi-)irrational fear of failing in that one thing. It's crippling, honestly. It's so awful that I can't sleep, can't eat beforehand because it feels like I'd have to vomit after eating anything.

I am so deeply afraid of failing that it's kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I will fail because I am so afraid of it. Especially with this thing, I don't think if I hadn't been so afraid I definitely hadn't failed, I might still have, I'm pretty sure I would've, but that is not what's important here, because that is in the past.

What I tell my friends when they are very afraid of something is: "Fear is in the future. You are now.", which is the wisest thing I've ever heard about fear. Doesn't calm me all that much though. I can tell myself a million times that fear is in the future, I'll still be damn scared. One party is telling me it's not that big a deal and they're will be a lot of way more important things I could fail in, the other one's telling me how we've been trying this for so long and how have you not gotten better at this?
And there I was, in the middle of this mess, trying and trying and trying and it's not working. When do I reach the point where I give up? When is it enough and I have to admit to myself it's just eating up my money and my time and all my energy and happiness - and I decided, no matter how the next try turns out, it'll be the last time I try. (Now, I'm pretty sure that helped a whole lot, that I was so sure in my head that whatever happens, this will be the very last time I'll have to do it. Also, the universe saw my struggle and gifted me with three hours of brand new snow right when I needed it.)
I am not absolutely sure why I wanted to share this or what exactly I wanted to share, but I think it's something along the lines of: Sometimes, failure is giving up. But giving up isn't always failing, sometimes it's realizing there are much more important things you could give your energy to.