turning twenty

18.06.2019

Another year gone by. That went quickly, huh? Now it's here, the big 2-0, the second decade of my life done with. That's 1/5 of a century. When my grandparents were my age, they already had their first child and had gotten married (imagine! A child at 20! Then again, if you've seen the war at 10, I don't think there's much that can frighten you anymore). And me? I'm living in a shared flat in a (still somewhat) strange city, drinking way too much coffee everyday and trying to get my anxiety in check (might there be a correlation between these two things? Who knows?)
My new train pass arrived a few weeks ago and to be honest, I was shocked. My old one is valid until one day before my birthday, and to be quite frank, I was NOT aware we already were close enough to that date for them to send me the new one. Nineteen has flown by, or so it seems looking back on it now. Time passing has always frightened me.
I think I'm starting twenty at a better place that I started nineteen, or eighteen even (let's be real, that was a shitshow). There were a lot of things I learnt in the last year; one: opportunities will not simply arise for you. They will not fall into your lap. If you want them, you'll have to work for them and create them for yourself, even if that means submitting your writing to be published and being absolutely horrified with it from the day you press "send" on the edited thing, and even if that means talking to people (not too good at this one yet). Two: I can't just wait for my next great story to write itself. I want to write, so I have to start writing and stop talking about wanting to write. Another thing I learnt (I want to say the hard way, but I'm not so sure it actually was that hard) is that in order to overcome my loneliness and my fear of people I actually have to talk to people, and that sometimes, I might even be surprised by how much they actually don't dislike me. I learnt that sometimes, there is a major difference in what you seem like and what you feel like, and that sometimes you can use that to your advantage. I've learnt that keeping the right people around you can make a huge difference in your happiness.
Nineteen was the year that marked my fourth publication in short story collections, so yay for bravery (a thing I noticed: I tend to name my short stories after their protagonists, and it's not a short story of mine if not at least one person dies), and nineteen was the year I sucked it up and went and read my story out loud in front of an audience. Nineteen was also the year that the flat I share with two other people might have just started to become a home.
Nineteen was strange, it took ages and also, didn't I just blink and wasn't I like thirteen about half an hour ago?
But all in all, when all counts are done and all is added up: nineteen was a good year. Here's to making twenty an even better one!

deep and meaningful

I struggle with making deep and meaningful connections with people. That is something I realised yesterday night as I sat at our kitchen table with my flatmate who has quickly become one of my best friends.
See, I struggle finding new friends and meeting new people. I am absolutely petrified at the thought of having to talk to strangers and I need at least a week to prepare before any sort of social event (more if people I don't know will be there) and afterwards, I need at least a week to recover from that.  That leads to me not really interacting with people, and the rare times I do attend a social event, I sit in a corner, scared of what people might think of me, that they might not like me, and don't talk to anyone, let alone anyone new. New friends mostly find me, and if they do, it's mostly in situations that have been forced on me (sorry to all my friends who's birthday parties I've attended and not been able to strike up a conversation with anyone except for the people I know very well already). When I am forced to come out of my shell and actually feel like the person I'm talking to does not hate me I do tend to overshare quite quickly. I don't even want to think about the amount of times I've probably missed a really great person because I was convinced they did not like me - that's actually a problem, and it has only come to my attention very recently when I met someone new a few months ago and was utterly convinced they disliked me so much that they'd rip my head off if I spoke another word to them again (hi, anxiety! why don't you fuck off?) only to have that person later tell me they thought I was pretty cool (take that, monkey brain!).

So. Oversharing. Once I've decided I like someone, I talk too much too fast and share too much (sorry to all the people I've rambled to about my stove or books or university or musicals or anything, actually. I know I tend to do that.) very very quickly. If I've known you over three months and I haven't shown you a photo of my cat yet there must be something wrong. I tell the people I like so much about myself, they probably don't have any space to tell me about themselves. I talk and I talk and I talk and I don't stop unless you tell me to because I want to keep the conversation going so badly, I want to keep people interested so badly, I want people to like me so badly I share everything I can. Which then leads to the "problem" I've noticed tonight at around 1:24AM in my kitchen drinking tea: because I share so broadly and widely and with so many people, there barely seems to be anything special about me rambling to someone about a musical I've enjoyed or a book I've read or something that happened. It's like if I invited someone new over to my house and instead of telling them "This is the bathroom, here is the kitchen, this is the living room, sit down if you like" I give them the full tour of the house, every drawer, every closet, and I do that for every guest ever.
I think I struggle with making deep and meaningful connections with people because I want to have that so badly that I stop focusing on each person as an individual that I can give my attention to, but become one big sharing machine dashing out information over information instead of thinking about what connects me to that particular person. I want people to like me so desperately that I forget that it's not just about me presenting the best version of me - it's about a connection. So this will be a goal I will add to my make-my-thirteen-year-old-self-proud-project for this year: engage with people, pay attention to people; make deep and meaningful connections with people.

clicking bones

The most horrible noise in the world is joints clickling. I have a friend who always cracks his knuckles, and every time he does it, I flinch. I talked to my best friend earlier today and told her that every time I leave my bed in the morning, my right hip clicks. I met up with a friend the other day, and every time he moved, a joint somewhere in his body clicked.

I don't think there's any noise I hate as much as clicking joints, because it means that something is wrong. That something is off and in no means how it's supposed to be. That things are shifting, and I despise change. I hate having to adjust to something new. I am terribly afraid of things going wrong, of things not being in the right place, and every time I hear a joint click I am reminded that most things are out of place.
Right now, so many things feel wrong and off and out of place and for once I think it's not just in my head. Though most of it probably is. Do you know that weird feeling you get right where your skull meets the back of your neck when you feel like there's something wrong? That slight bit of pressure, or at least it feels like pressure is applied to that spot.
I feel lost, like I've let go of something I shouldn't have, and now I'm falling, or drifting away, and it scares me. I am losing grip. I don't quite know on what yet, but I definitely am. Maybe it's my sanity. I feel lost quite a lot of the time, but this time it's different. It's more intense, more real, for some reason.
My joints click on the daily. My body moves and shifts in ways I'm not used to, in ways it's not supposed to. My bones don't belong where they are, they don't belong together the way they connect. Something's not quite right, but I haven't figured out yet what.