There was a time a few months ago that I couldn’t have been happier, but I felt it wear away slowly. I’m back to having (almost) everything that I could ever want at surface level, but if it’s quiet enough, an overwhelming sense of frustration and anger sets in. It gets worse when I think about how lucky I am and start to feel guilty for being unhappy. I’m partially frustrated because I don’t know what’s wrong. If I knew what was wrong, I could fix it.
For a while, it was burnout at work. Then it was feeling like I had gained weight again. Then it was back to frustration with dating. Presently, I’m annoyed that I’m not getting what I want, but I couldn’t tell you what I'm missing.
On one hand, I never feel like I’m enough. I wish I was more muscular, weighed less, faster, etc. I oscillate between getting my ass kicked on hikes and beach runs to getting annoyed that a hike was too easy. I feel inadequate on a daily basis at work each time I’m given a new task and can’t complete it as quickly or accurately as I want to, especially because I feel like it’s expected since that’s who I am. I can’t talk about work (or the gym) without suddenly feeling the urge to work because I feel like I didn’t do enough. Not to mention, I want my apartment to be cleaner. I want to be better at doing my makeup and spend more time reading. I want to spend more time calling my sister when she wants to talk.
Despite not feeling like enough, I feel like too much. I have too much to say at 6am on a Saturday. I spend so much time learning about exercising and exercising that I’m a maniac. I want to hike at almost any moment. As busy as I am, I could still make time do date when others can’t.
I feel like a circus freak. People want to watch what I do, but don’t want to be a part of it, and those (outside of my family) who support me have such high expectations based on what I’ve done before that I’ll never be able to keep up.
I generally have a good sense of self-awareness, but I’m afraid that if I believe the positive feedback, I’ll either come off as conceded or get soft and fall behind. Not to mention, I’m all too aware I could fall from this point at any moment, especially if I don’t keep up. I do my best to make it look easy, and at this point it does feel easy most of the time, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take immense time, effort and motivation. I’m constantly fighting myself. The only way I can pause the fight is to keep working or find a way out of my thoughts. I’m great at not giving a f*ck about what anyone else thinks until it’s so obvious that I can’t avoid it.
Maybe I’m tired of feeling like part of the circus. Am I allowed to feel that way? That seems to imply that I’m unique in some way, but I don’t want to believe that. There’s a difference between unique and special – each person is unique. We’re all special too, but no person is more special than anyone else, but no person is more special than anyone else. I have to remind myself of that sometimes as I get siloed into this mentality. At the end of the day, I like who I am. I don’t want to change, and I want others to encourage me not to change, but also to do whatever I want. And maybe tell me that they’ll still respect me if I take a break… or that taking a break doesn’t change my identity.