A Beautiful Waste of Talent

I contain so much fear.  I live with it 24/7.  I think one of the greatest fears I experience is the fear that I'll always be miserable.  No, I'm not generally a miserable person, but when I think about the life changes I want to make, I worry that I still won't be satisfied even after following through with those important changes.  I'm afraid that everything will be one huge disappointment.  I'll still be struggling, if not with the same things I'm struggling with now, then something else to replace them.  I'll have lived my whole life hoping and dreaming for these specific things, and maybe I will accomplish them, but they won't feel so great after all.  They just won't seem like a big deal.  Or I'll have gotten myself in more of a mess and it will be worse than the situation I'm in now (which is fairly mellow and easy).

I can't believe I struggle in the ways that I do.  When I look in the mirror, I see someone completely different from the way I feel inside, and the way I feel when I look at others and when they look at me.  In the mirror I see someone pretty, someone who ought to be confident all the time and handle life in a completely different manner.  But when I'm not looking in the mirror, I forget what I really look like to the outside world.  I forget that I can be that radiant, confident woman I've seen so many times, but who is actually trapped in the mirror.  I forget that she needs to step outside the mirror and release herself unto the world.  Instead, I walk around this earth timidly, hesitantly, worriedly, ashamedly, confusedly, and bashfully.  I feel small, insecure, and insignificant.  My dreams feel impossible.  My passions are strong but everything is painful.  I legitimately suffer for being so full of hopes and dreams but so unafraid and unable to do anything about them.  I am trapped by my own twisted mind and I feel like a child.

I don't get why God made me this way.  I think He did make me special, because I know I have talents and skills and traits to offer the world.  But why am I also so ill equipped to use them?  Why do I not possess what most others do?  I feel so lacking, so ill at ease, and so desperate.  I just want to be held.  But I don't want others involved.  I don't care about relationships or melding people into my life goals.  No, this is about independence.  This is about being an adult and knowing what it means for the first time.  This is about never wanting to feel inadequate again.  I want to squash this constant agony of never being enough, of never having the tools or the knowledge or the intelligence or the common sense to do anything useful to gain success for myself.  I want to know I can someday be at rest.

My soul feels stretched to its limits.  I know that doing nothing is worse than trying and failing.  I know many practical, logical, functional, rational things.  But "knowing" them doesn't do me any good.  It makes me feel worse.  It ignites those flames of inadequacy and overwhelmed-ness.  I am swallowed in simple oppression.  I know there are probably people in the world who suffer similarly but to a greater extent, but I haven't met them, so I feel like I'm the only one.  Nobody thinks about the details that I do.  Nobody lets them get in the way.  I submit to my weakness and anxiety about the most basic things in life.  So I am constantly uncomfortable, no matter where I am or what I do.  I feel incomplete, immature, and unready.  I am so late and slow in developing.  The very fact that I am writing this is pathetic!

I know I should pray more.  I let all of these burdens take hold of my mind until I am fairly paralyzed with their weight.  I wish someone could help.  But I don't really, because it would make me even more ashamed and embarrassed and wishing I could be a turtle so I could crawl into my shell.  I hate my humanity.  But there are times I've been able to love it.  There's nothing quite like being human...it is definitely its own thing to be appreciated. But one can also loathe it, celebrate it, cherish it, worship it, degrade it, and unveil it.  I know our outlook is what matters most.  But sometimes, I just think that's bullshit and I'll eat some chocolate.

I feel stuck.  I feel too old to be so stuck, and I'm afraid that by the time I'm finally unstuck I'll be 80, and by then I won't give a shit anymore.

I think our society has ruined me.  That's why I've always felt like I don't belong.  I don't want to be a gringa.  I have always felt my Latin blood more strongly than anything else.  This isn't my culture, this isn't my nature.  I want to be unleashed.  

Commitment, resolution, accomplishment...

I've been wanting to post another entry since my last one, but haven't been sure what topic to write about - even though I always have significant thoughts and moments that I feel I should write down.  It bothers me that I feel I need a definite subject to write about at length.  Silly me, a blog post can be long or short.  It is my blog, after all!

Anywho, I was chatting with a friend online a few minutes ago and he was telling me about an event he will be a part of, and that I should save the date for it.  "But I hope I'll see you before then!" he said.  I replied, nonchalantly, "Yes, hopefully."

Then my friend said something that really struck me.  "Forget hopefully...commit!"  

WOW.  I mean, wow.  He is SO right!  And I think this could apply to many things in our lives.  We need to be more proactive and less blasé about things in life, especially that which we are most passionate about and/or want to achieve.  "Hopefully" should not make a regular occurrence in our thought process.  (Okay, maybe I need to start speaking from my own voice and not for everyone else's; I mean to say that I need not use "hopefully" so liberally!)  I have always been a hopeful person, always dreaming to the distant, abstract future or other realm of reality (i.e. fantasy), and hoping against hope that things would turn out the way I wanted (or "hoped") they would.  But I realize, now that I'm an adult, that there's more to hope and making dreams come true than just hope.

I am a late bloomer.  I know this, and I have to be okay with this.  Why?  Well, because I know that I do indeed bloom.  I just don't follow the same life paths or trends as others typically do.  And as I was telling another friend of mine earlier today, I have to be compassionate and loving toward myself in all these matters.  That's why I'm trying to turn away from just the hoping and more toward a do-ing frame of mind.  I am gentle toward myself in knowing that I don't need to compete with the rest of the world and that this journey is mine alone.  But this requires a balance; I need both the confidence to make conscious decisions and steps toward my goals, as well as genuine faith and hope that I will achieve these things I dream of.

So I feel like I'm being very vague and general (it's easy for me to ramble on without specifics).  Let's get down to the nitty gritty.  What do I really want to achieve?  What am I so anxious about? What am I hoping for, and what am I acting on?  Well, number one: I want to grow up.  I am an adult, technically, but I want to be living an adult life.  I want to pay my own rent in my own place, and I want to choose where in the country (or world) that place is to be.  I want the confidence and independence to be self-sustaining.  Right now, I'm not completely there.  I have been hoping for so long that I would find myself there, and I've been dreaming of it with exasperating fervor.

I also dream of travel.  I dream of cultural and linguistic immersion.  I dream of new surroundings, of learning my way around, and of building my community.  I know what it's like to hope for all of this (and I certainly hope for much more), but what can I do to do something about this?  I can't just keep telling myself and others that someday, hopefully, it will "happen."  It never will if I don't MAKE it happen!

I am going to commit, therefore, to making 2013 the Year of Change for me.  No, I'm not making a New Year's Resolution.  I am making a personal resolution to honor the most genuine desires God has placed in my heart, and take the plunge toward giving them life.