I went to Starbucks today to see if I could make sense out of the uncertain chaos going on in my life.
After yet another failed attempt for human company, I tidied up my room a bit (moved a pile of clothes from one spot and moved it to another) to the old, familiar, comforting sounds of Death Cab for Cutie's "Transatlanticism."
After accomplishing that task, I crumpled onto the floor, my back against my sliding closet doors, as I tried to make sense of what was going on with my life as the mellow, poignant tunes of Death Cab continued to play.
Finally after a long moment of self-pity I decided, I don't need anyone to escort me through my life, and got up to head to the neighborhood Starbucks on my own.
Armed with cigarettes, my Gold card, one of my trusty journals, and two pens (hey, you never know), I grabbed my usual venti soy green tea latte at 140° and a table outside and got to writing to sort out the heavy cloud of thoughts I had floating in my head.
At a point where it felt like my life had fallen off the tracks, I originally wanted to write about what I was going to do to help myself get back in order.
But knowing the way life goes on (especially my own), I ended up writing about something else, touching on something much deeper that was going on in my psyche.
The following is the journal entry that transpired from this event.
0104 — 0550PM
I don't know what to do with my life.
A common theme, at least I'm sure it's something with which the pages of this journal is not unfamiliar.
I've been here before. This chaotic feeling of being all out at sea is not foreign to me whatsoever.
Regardless, I am still unnerved by this overpowering notion that the ground I've put myself on is still rocky, still unstable — ready to crumble from the immense weight of uncertainty I carry, ready to allow the earth to swallow me whole with no trace of me left for others to find.
Yes, I've been in this same situation before.
These raw feelings of being vulnerable and bare I still find uncomfortable, no matter how many times I've already come face-to-face with them.
It feels as if I'm shedding an old layer of skin to make room for a new one.
It is within this awkward, transitory process do I find myself naked and vulnerable. While having outgrown another layer of my life, I feel I am not ready to take on a new one.
I would very much like to hold on to that old layer of skin because it is there that I find secure protection.
I've earned that layer of skin I'm now trying to shed.
I've earned its experience, earned its knowledge and wisdom.
Earned everything that came with the life I lead while wearing it.
Everything I absorbed from life while living in that skin is what made it tough. The knowledge, the familiarity, the undoubted certainty -- everything that came with the passage of time -- made that skin my protector, my shell.
Those experiences helped to shape me, gave me an identity to show the world around me.
Told me who I was, where I stood.
My strengths. My flaws.
The overall quality of my existence so I knew how I measured up to those by whom I was surrounded.
Now that the powers that be have decided that it's time for me to shed that skin I had grown into, grown comfortable with after all this time, not only am I afraid of feeling raw and vulnerable once more, but also I wonder: who am I going to be once I lose that piece of me?
Despite my immense desire to understand the unknown (especially if it comes with the advantage of personal growth), I'm frightened by the possibility that after all these years of self-introspection and psychoanalyzation, I still don't understand myself at all.
I still look to outside sources to figure out who I am.
I guess in my desire to be a part of this world, I seek out ways to define myself in their terms.
A gay male.
A Leo.
A Rabbit.
A schizoid with minor psychopathic tendencies.
These are definitions made by other people that I assign to myself, believing in the knowledge of others as a means to understand myself instead of going straight to the source.
Because the truth of the matter is: I don't even know myself.
But then again, does anyone know their selves at such an intense and intimate level similar to what I am in pursuit of with myself?
It's very rare, if not impossible, to come in contact with an individual who knows everything about them self whole-heartedly.
For one, not many out there are willing to exchange their vision of the world around them for a closer look inside themselves.
They might already be too preoccupied with their outside world, too involved with the external to even consider the internal.
Or they may have already taken a peek at who they are inside, and either they were satisfied with the superficial snapshot of what they saw and moved on, or they saw something in themselves that frightened and discouraged them from the possibility of deeper exploration of their psyche.
Also, because of our resilient and pliable nature, it may very well be impossible for anyone to completely know their selves entirely.
As we move through life, we grow. We change. We are not always the same.
The beliefs, ideals, and understandings we hold on to one moment may not be the same ones to which we subscribe the next, or years after.
Because of the infinite possibilities bestowed upon us and the forward, linear fashion of our existence, our movement through life, we will never fully explore all the avenues within our grasp, therefore unable to fully understand the limits of our capacity, our actions, our thoughts, our essence — in short, the whole of our being.
Knowing this, however, has still yet to prevent me from attempting to wholly explore and understand myself with what I know and what I've been given.
I could have gone on and on, but unfortunately due to my body's design, my hand was already exhausted.
Also, I became distracted by the goings on of Facebook via my cell phone, so I decided there would be a good stopping point for that entry.
Going back to what I originally planned on writing about: my life being a jumbled mess of sorts.
Now that I'm officially no longer in school, it's as if my life is one big open road with just me behind the wheel.
While other people take solace in that and often doggedly pursue to be in a situation like that with their own lives, it has the opposite effect on me.
In all honesty, it scares the shit out of me.
I'm a person who craves structure.
Being the schizoid that I am, knowing all the predetermined rules and boundaries of a situation helps to make me feel safe and secure (then my minor psychopathic tendencies kick in so I can manipulate known variables toward my favor).
That's just the nature of my individual life's philosophy that I've willingly accepted.
I'm used to having life being dictated for me (under my conscious decisions to pick and choose my actions, of course), used to having schedules and tasks and preset expectations that I can meet and/or exceed.
This creates something of a bubble for me, if you will. An environment where I know what is expected, and thus, in control.
Take that bubble away and give me the freedom to choose where to go next in life with some dire and pressing points to consider, and I will inevitably choke.
I don't know where this fear of making my own decisions for myself stems from, because I know it's apparent that I have a mind of my own and am deftly capable of picking and choosing things of my interest or benefit.
However, when it comes to the huge, life-changing decisions, that's the part I always have the most trouble with.
I've experienced this before, after graduating from high school. Instead of going back to college immediately that fall, I decided to continue working my part-time retail job and wasting time.
Sure, I had a general idea of going to massage school, but I sat on that for two-and-a-half years before I eventually got myself around to enrolling.
Now that massage school is over, I'm back to square one. Back to trying to figure out what new direction to take my life on next.
I have yet another general plan, one I've already shared with countless others.
I've already publicly made known what my intentions were after finishing massage school, so not following through with them will only make me feel like a fraud, fill me with humiliation over the fact that I am unable to follow through with what I've set out to do in the first place.
I have the resources ready to get the ball rolling in that direction, so why I am hesitating?
Going back to what I've written earlier today about feeling like a snake shedding its skin. That's exactly what it is, where I am in life at the moment.
I'm being forced to outgrow my old skin (the safety and structure of going to massage school) to make room for a new one.
The only problem is that I don't know exactly what this new skin is meant for.
All I know is that I'm at a point in my life where things are fresh, the opportunities abound, and I'm still standing in the hallway, wondering which door to pick.
It's as if a burden has been lifted from my shoulders after completing school, only to have another, weightier load placed on my back— the weight of the world.
The question is not what am I now supposed to do with it, but rather, how can I get my fickle ass to make a decision?
That remains to be an unsolved mystery.
(another topic begs a response [just who the fuck am I?], but that's for another journal entry...)
