Hey everyone. It’s been two weeks since my last blog post. I’m still busy. I’m still a little too stressed, a little too tired and a little too overwhelmed.

Oh, but I feel fine.

Just fine.

I should provide some background for this post by saying that it is nearing 1am as I start writing. I’m tired, angry, upset, and very, very lonely. These are all things that I’ve become accustomed to rolling into the word ‘fine.’ Despite being ‘fine’, though, I’m probably in about the worst state and the worst space to be doing any kind of writing.

Yet here goes. For the aforementioned reasons, I’ll probably have a few spelling and grammatical errors throughout this piece. I feel obliged to say that, since I’m tired. I use being tired as an excuse on countless occasions. When I make a mistake, I say I’m tired but secretly push myself even more.

Angry and upset. Customer service is hard. I can leave it at that. Furthermore, I let myself be affected to easily by some of the little annoyances in life. Being hot-tempered by nature and on edge a lot of the time only makes me more upset with myself as a result. It doesn’t take much to set me off most days, though I constantly try my hardest to be patient and calm.

Loneliness is a strange thing. I’m not altogether upset about being lonely at times. Yes, I don’t have a lot of close friends. I don’t feel very trusting of most people about my deep, honest feelings. Talking about them makes me feel vulnerable, and there is the concern that I might have to actually deal with my problems rather than bury them deep down.

I suppose that’s the most baffling thing about loneliness – the fact that we desire so much for companionship, yet a large portion of our time is spent shutting ourselves out. We skip past the emotional drama, because it takes too much of our time. We deny that we feel crappy or upset or desperate.

I frequently work because I want to forget. I’m an anxious, high-energy person. My mind is racing a million miles an hour and I struggle to filter a lot of the things I say. If I exhaust myself, though, I can become a little calmer and worry a little less.

For so long in life, I’ve been telling myself that I’m fine, that I can engage with one person or another in these deep, meaningful and intimate friendships or romances. Perhaps I’ve had good reason to think these things in the past. We all grow in our understanding of the world and ourselves, year after year. I suppose that I have realised that I cannot really open up properly to others unless I can be open to myself.

These little realisations work. A little. Slowly, and bit by bit, I can become a better person to myself. Loneliness isn’t a real barrier between people. It’s something that our mind perceives to hold us back. It’s a misdirected defence mechanism because we’re not trusting enough.

Sometimes I want to scream and shout out my problems to the nearest person there is. Sometimes I want to grab hold of them and cry until I pass out. Emotions can overwhelm us in all manner of spectacular ways. It’s not loneliness that stops me here, really. It’s the fact that I’m too proud to talk about what might be bugging me all the time.

Now, I don’t mean proud as in “I’m too good to be sad,” or that moronic phrase “I’m too tough”. I’m saying that, as a lonely, individualistic, semi-independant human being, I don’t feel that I can say that I feel crap. I feel fine. What would people think of me if I ever said that I wasn’t? That one thing or another was really getting to me?

I’m fine. It’s a little lie that we tell ourselves so that we can, at some level, convince ourselves that we’re dealing perfectly well with our lives. Perhaps it’s more a sign that we’re not.

Talk to someone. It really helps. I’m sitting here now wishing I’d emptied out a few more things earlier on today (I did, but it instead came out as me angrily cursing half the world!). You can talk to someone. You can even talk to me. Me feeling crap doesn’t mean I can’t help you. If anything, I can relate pretty well. Helping others is a part of what can really improve a person’s day – on either side of the fence.

Talk to someone. If it helps even me, don’t you think it can help you?

 

 

P.S. More thoughts on this to follow in a future post!