Mission Sleep: Failed

January 7th, 2017

I was just about to go to sleep, but I started to get a bunch of negative thoughts and images as I closed my eyes and quickly decided that I should kill a little more time on the Internet to distract myself. It usually works and in a couple of minutes I can get back to going to sleep, but not this time.

I am a member of the Miraculous Amino, an app/community for people who love Miraculous Ladybug. You can probably guess that I write fanfiction. I have for about eight months now and I love doing it. Writing has been my passion for a long time, but writing fanfiction is a completely new experience. You don't create the characters since they're already made and have a personality already decided, but you instead get to interpret them. It's really fun because everyone interprets the characters slightly different. And you get to write in so many things you've always thought about the characters that no one else has thought of. It's kind of like characters and a story you share and can discuss with so many other people. Writing fanfiction is something I love doing.

I have written a good bit and got amazing feedback, but I've been on hiatus for a couple days and I find that it has the opposite effect than what I had intended. See, I went on hiatus after my youth pastors announced that they would be stepping down. It affected me quite heavily and I felt that I needed a break from certain things to calm myself down and bring my mood back up. I didn't want to write anything half-heartedly, that's not how I am. It's either all the way or not at all. So I took a break to sort things out.

I've been on hiatus for five days and it has only affected me in negative ways. I still get online, just without the pressure of needing to post things and comment and talk to people. It was kinda okay on the first and second day, but it's mostly made me feel disconnected from everybody on there. Simply watching has made me distance myself from the community and, if anything, It's only made me feel worse. I can handle this kind of thing though, I have before. I can handle feeling like I can't connect with people, because I feel that way on a regular basis, but while I was browsing the amino to distract myself, I came across a post that both made me smile for a certain user and make my chest hurt at the same time.

A very talented writer whom I will not name recently got a title. It has to do with fanfiction writing, of course, and this person deserves it! They really do, but I guess it made me upset because I've been jealous of this person. I'm not trying to sound shallow or petty, I swear. They can just do everything I can't when it comes to writing. I know I shouldn't compare myself with someone else, but I suck at doing the things I should. They're confident with what they do and they're quick, able to please both themselves and their readers. They can so easily flow with everything and create incredible pieces. I would like to think that I am a good writer, but I get anxious with everything I do. I worry and stress even over the rough draft of a fanfic I'm writing for fun. I overthink and make all these big plans that only make me overthink more. I love the ideas I have for my fanfiction right now, but I'm moving so slowly with so much indecision about them that I feel kind of hopeless. None of it is coming along as smoothly as I wanted it to and my ideas are just not getting across. I always have the problem of freaking out about everything that I end up doing more worrying than actual writing.

Writing is usually an outlet for my problems and something I do given any circumstance or emotion, but writing can be hard when you lose that inspiration you once had in the beginning of a project. I am going to see through all of it, do not misunderstand. I do not quit things I get so far on simply because I lose the motivation to do it, but while I'm just sitting here idly waiting for that spark to come back, everybody is moving ahead of me.

This user writes their fanfiction so quickly and they always turn out great. Everyone loves their work, and they should because it is amazing! But while they're moving along and writing and getting their work featured and everyone is singing their praises for them, I'm sitting here and doing nothing but whining about how much I'm going to miss my youth pastor and worrying about if I'm going to be able to open up to the new one the youth group is getting at the end of January. I'm sitting here becoming a nervous wreck because I can hardly open up to anyone. It took me over four years to open up to my youth pastor. Four years. I don't know how I'm going to be able to meet the new youth pastor and not feel bitter or upset. I don't want to judge this innocent person who is fulfilling God's will simply because I suck at opening up to people. I don't want to feel bitter about some amazing writing simply because they accomplished something and got a reward for their hard work. I don't want to be upset over so many silly things simply because I have no idea how to handle my emotions and I don't know how to deal with change.

I don't want everyone else to move ahead of me while I'm still floundering and stressing over what to do, but it's happening anyway. The truth of the matter is that I don't know what to do with any aspect of my life. I don't know what to write, I don't know how talk to people, I don't know how to just be happy for someone without adding jealousy to the mix, and I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what that silly hiatus was for at this point and I don't even know what I'm typing right now. I just feel hopeless and depressed, like I have no purpose and everything I'm even attempting to do right now is in vain. I feel pathetic for being so jealous of that writer and being so unnecessarily upset about a great opportunity for my youth pastor. I'm just a mess and I don't know what to do about it.

I am not truly upset about that writer getting a title. Good for them, really. I guess it just triggered something in me that made all these things I've been bottling up finally overflow. I just feel so incompetent, and I have nobody to tell this to because just feeling that way makes me feel like I'm being dramatic and ridiculous. I've always been one to seem composed and self-assured, but that's far from the truth. I have so little confidence and I'm far too sensitive for my own good. I just hide it well. I feel like that's more of a curse than a blessing.

I want to be able to call out and tell my loved ones this, but that's just the thing, I don't know how. I suck with words verbally. I can write them all day long, but once I actually try to get them out I just clam up and trip over everything I want to say. I know I said this once already, but I'm gonna say it again: I'm a mess.

I know God has a plan for all of this and I know that I will overcome this suffocating feeling of hopelessness. I just hope it comes into play soon.

(I apologize if this makes no sense. I needed to get it all out. In my defense, I am sleep deprived and emotional. Okay, I'm really going to sleep now).

A Little Habit of Mine

January 5th, 2017.

I have many little habits that a lot of people don't know about. It's not that I'm hiding them or anything, but they're the kind of habits that are so insignificant and small that either no one notices them or they just don't come up in everyday conversation. I'll probably speak more about these habits in the future, but right now I'm talking about one in particular that is actually pretty common.

I write on myself. It's more than just little doodles and shapes here and there though, I couldn't draw if my life depended on it. I like to write things to remember on myself. Paper can get crumpled and lost and ripped and so many other things, but it's hard to forget you have something you wanted to remember when it's in bold letters on your forearm. Right now I actually have a sentence on my arm from last Wednesday when my youth pastor was praying. It says, "If it was something I could do on my own, you would not have sent your son." She's kind of long-winded, but she speaks with so much strength and power that I like it more than anything. She is such an inspiration to me. I long to be the kind of woman she is. Her words and messages are so encouraging. I love writing down the things she says.

I also like to write other reminders on my skin. For example:

I wrote this Wednesday, too. My youth pastor and her husband will be transition to become missionaries with a sports ministry, so they're stepping down from being youth pastors. It's an amazing opportunity for them to not only grow as Christians, but spread the gospel. And I am ecstatic for them, I truly am, but it still hurts to see them go. They have done so much for me and they are very close to me. I cannot describe the way they have poured into my life and helped me change for the better, the way they have encouraged me to be the best person I can be and follow Christ without making it all about the dos and don'ts. They announced how and why they're leaving Sunday and I, of course, bawled my eyes out in the bathroom after letting a few tears slip out in the sanctuary. They were telling the youth group again Wednesday for anybody who wasn't there Sunday and I could feel myself starting to tear up again. I hate crying. No- I like crying when I'm by myself and I can let it out in peace, but I hate crying in public where people can see me. I didn't want to cry, so I took the pen I had and wrote "Don't cry". The only reason I took a picture of it was because after I wrote it I thought, "Oh! This would make a cool picture." and I posted it on Instagram XD

I also write things like "Calm down" and "Breathe" whenever I have to speak in front of even a handful of people. I write reminders that I'm doing okay and I don't sound stupid and that even if I mess up, no one will remember in a couple of days. I always do this when I'm feeling anxious or upset. I think it helps me stay calm and not freak out. Most of my habits are nervous ones, like I fiddle with my hair and sleeves or I'll sometimes count up to distract myself until I can calm down (last time I did that I counted to 307). I do all of these small things that little to nobody knows about, and I can't help but find them as the tiny things that help make up of who I am. It may be silly to think that, but I'm a very silly person with silly ideas.

I also write my otps on my skin, but I'm pretty sure every fangirl does.

Fun Fact: The only thing I can do well with my hands is playing video games.

Nope, not writing. You can probably tell that my hand writing isn't the best, and I don't even type on a keyboard correctly. I love writing and taking notes, but unless it's on my laptop, it doesn't look pretty.

Falling Behind

January 5th, 2017

I am a dancer. I have been dancing since I was four, and it is something I adore. I love the way I can feel the music as I move my body, allowing the rhythm of whatever song I'm dancing to take hold of my movements. It's almost as if muscle memory (after much practice of a routine) and the music corresponds with each other and gives my mind a break. Though it is hard work and it takes a lot of time, dancing is something I love to do. I don't want to go to college for it and spend my whole life dancing, that's reserved for writing, but I cannot imagine my life without being able to feel the music the way I can with dance. Unfortunately, I don't have to imagine it.

I am an unlucky lady, but maybe the fact that I somehow hurt my knee has more to do with how I can't seem to ever sit still than it has to do with luck. My knee started hurting in the beginning of September, but I only started complaining about it in November ( yeah, I know. I'm dumb). I thought it was bruised at first, but time went by and I realized that bruises don't last for two months. I went to the doctor and got some steroid pills for tendinitis. End of story, right? Oh, I wish. I skipped one week of dance (I go once a week), and though it was awful having to sit and watch everyone else stretch and learn these fun leaps, it was bearable because it was only one week. We hadn't even started learning our routines for recital, so it wasn't like I was missing anything I couldn't learn later. I took all of the medicine, but it didn't work. My knee was still in pain and I still couldn't stand for a certain period of time without getting annoyed, because my knee sucks at its job.

So we went to the doctor again and I got referred to a knee and hip specialist. Oh, fun. I won't even try to spell what it was the doctor said was wrong with my knee, but I pretty much overworked it so much that I started to damage the cartilage. I think, I was still trying to pronounce the word he used in my mind when he was talking about it (chondro-something or another). I was prescribed stronger medicine that would reduce the inflammation and help with the pain. That stuff works like a wonder, by the way. It would have been great if that was the end of it, but I'm not that lucky. I had to go to physical therapy twice a week for six weeks. I had to miss six weeks of dance. A break is nice, but I hate going without it for so long. I hate being deprived of merely moving my body in a way that gives me so much release and lifts the stresses of daily life. If magic were real, I believe dancing would be a form of it. It puts me under a spell that lets me lose myself and forget everything that worries (well, all worries except for the occasional "Did I do that right?"). Dancing is freaking magical, as cliché as that sounds, and I am a wizard with a damaged wand.

I'm a little more than halfway finished with pt. My knee is feeling a lot better, but I have missed so much of dance. We started learning our routines just a week after that appointment, a few days before my first day of physical therapy. I have videoed and intently watched the dance moves, but it just isn't the same. I can't learn it as well by sitting and watching, but even more than that, I am afraid that I won't be able to learn it at all. A lot of time has passed, a lot of things at the studio has been taught, and I have fallen behind. I haven't done a split or even stretched (aside from my pt exercises) in a while; I'm probably not nearly as flexible as I used to be. Grainy videos are not teaching me what I need to learn and I feel like I'm running out of time. I know I'm being ridiculous. It won't be that hard for me to catch up if I put enough effort into it, but that doesn't stop the fear. I always get anxious when I start learning my recital routines, but it's even worse now that I can't even practice them to assure myself that I will be fine. I don't know if I'm gonna be fine. I'm more than likely going to be alright, but I am a little ball of anxiety. Even if I know in my mind that everything is going to be alright, I still worry to the point of hyperventilating.

I have fallen behind and I am still falling. Further and further with unwavering fear. Everything is going to be okay, I'm going to be able to dance, and I'm going to do amazing come May when I'm on that stage and I feel the adrenaline coursing through me. I'm going to be okay, but I still have two more weeks of physical therapy and I still have to catch up along with learning the rest of my dances before recital. I know I can do it, but I'm still scared.