University Thoughts – The Masks We Wear

Everyone is going through their own struggles, their own pains, and inner turmoils. And for the most part you can’t tell. We are a species of thespians, everyone knows how to put on their very own show. Though everyone’s show is different. Some do so by being over happy, forcing a smile and a laugh because for a little while it distracts them, others bite their lips and fight back tears because they can’t force a smile but god be damned if they are going to let those tears fall, others turn cold and repress it all and block it so their faces expressionless, and others get angry at the hand they have been dealt and at what they are trying to deal with. Every single person wears a different mask to hide what is beneath, for some those mask, very rarely, if ever come off, for some their masks will only come off around certain people and for some keeping the mask on is too much so they let it fall, and for a few they hardly even bother with the mask.

It often means that emotions and true feelings stay hidden or what they are feeling is misdirected or misrepresented so those around them can’t truly know what is going on or even guess. And then they’ll start getting annoyed because it feels like no one understands what they are going through, and that they are being inconsiderate, uncaring, rude, ignorant. But how are they supposed to know if you don’t let down your mask? How do they know they are unintentionally making it worse if you don’t let them know, and how do you know that your misdirected behavior is hurting them if you don’t even try to look at things from their perspective?

My sister is currently hurting. She’s finding it hard to acclimatise herself back to being home, but all we are seeing is anger and disrespect and rudeness. How are we meant to know and help her when she’s feeling unhappy when all she is giving us is this? I admit i have thought that she’s been rude and ungrateful and disrespectful, which she is being but she doesn’t see that, all she sees is that she is hurting and no one cares. When they do. We do. I tried to reach out to her, to talk to her, I asked her if she wanted to chat, but she didn’t want any of it. She doesn’t want to hear some of the hard truths, because she knows she going to get some of that as well as comfort, she’d get that too.

It’s difficult to take off your own mask, and it’s just as had to see someone take off theirs.

University Thoughts – Last One Standing

Everyone else has left for Christmas now, so here I am in my house all by myself waiting till Monday before I can leave. The house is quiet now. I’m used to there always being someone here, to have a house so full of life to suddenly being so dead feels wrong. I have been in this house since September, I never went back home for a weekend, everyone else did. But me, I’ve been here the whole time. Though for the first time, being here feels strange.

I’ve been looking back at my posts around this time last year, when my first ever semester at uni was drawing to a close. It’s weird how different that period of time at uni is to this time. I’m annoyed to say that this semester hasn’t been good. I had had so many new and fun experiences last year, I was living uni. Now, now it feels as if it has defeated me. I think I came here with the wrong sort of mindset, the wrong attitude, I don’t even remember a lot of this past semester it has gone by so quickly. I have had far too many emotional breakdowns when drunk, I’ve been sat far too many times in a haze, I have done nothing of any worth or merit. I have just wallowed in my own self pity, unable to pull myself up or shake myself out of it, no matter how times I’ve tried, or screamed at myself, all I’ve done this semester is waste it.

If I could redo it I would. I want to start again so badly, and start with a better attitude, with more motivation and drive and just do better.

Everything with me has been a glass half full. That’s the sort of person I am. I don’t want it to be. I irritate myself for feeling this way.

I’m trying right now to think of the positives, not dwell on the negatives of these past few months. I’m trying to think, trying to search past the sea of bad to find those little bright burning light bulbs. I hate how hard this is, I hate how hard it is for to me to try and think.

Right. There was Anna’s birthday bar crawl in freshers week, going to the pub quiz at Westies, going with Emma for her to get her first tattoo, the prank war: literally post it notes everywhere, cling-filming rooms, frozen cutlery, messages off peoples phones, bowl of ripped up paper on top of doors, getting my seconds and my helix pierced, late night trip to get pumpkins and then carving them, Halloween pub crawl, getting drunk one night in the house, filmed at a retirement home, filmed at the Kinema, late night walks, Sara’s birthday bar crawl, having random dancing sessions in the living room, leg dancing, getting so drunk I fell asleep in my armchair, silent disco, blindfold hide and seek in the house, late night trip to mcdonalds, Christmas market, signing for a house for next year and getting far too entertained by the quality street, Alicia’s farting, Emma’s  burping, becoming far too comfortable with my house and our bodily functions, new found love for bath bombs, going to Madame waffle, becoming course rep, ftv social, constantly jumping out of nowhere and scaring each other, toby carvery with my old flat then winning a song bingo, meal with my film production group, spa night with Emma and Sara, talks for hours with Nicola, home cooked spaghetti bolognese night, watching scary films, and I even early on in the semester went for a meeting to help write a script for a film, it may have never amounted to anything but at least it was something.

Even though that took far too long to recollect, I’ve realised it was the little things. Little domestic things that have made me the happiest. Maybe that’s what I need to do more, stop expecting so much big stuff out of life, and just appreciate the little things. And stop dwelling on the bad stuff, on the stupid mistakes I have made, because I can’t take it back now. I want to focus on the good things, not the bad, and when second semester starts I am going to go into it with a different mind frame than I did this year.

For now, I just want to focus on the good memories and not let the bad memories take over my brain. This weekend alone in the house I hope will help me to do that, or it’ll make it worse.

Either way, I am so ready to go home and be done with this semester.

 

 

University Thoughts – Regret

Last night was meant to be an insanely fun night out with my friends, celebrating the end of second year, first semester. Instead it turned into a night where I got too drunk, confessed I had a thing for one of my friends over messenger, only to be rejected, and end up cry and being a hysterical, pathetic mess.

I feel like that has happened far too often to me over this past semester (not confessing a crush or whatever, that is extremely new) but having it when I am plastered with alcohol that all my emotions come to fruition and it spills over like a volcano.

I’ve been repressing too much.

And it had come back to royally bite me on the arse. It’s my own fault. It’s karma. This is what I deserve. But I am so annoyed with myself because I ruined what was meant to be a perfectly amazing and wonderful and joyous night out with my friends. I’m so annoyed that I let a boy get under my skin and occupy my thoughts for so long, wasted so much of my time worrying about how I was perceived, worrying about how I was coming across, when at the end of the day it was all for nothing. I wasted so much of my energy and so much of my time thinking, just for me to admit to him when drunk I had a thing for him just to learn that at the end of the day he didn’t feel the same. I feel like a right pillock. I misread all of the signs, I always had a feeling that I had, and sure enough I was right.

This is a part of life though. It’s a learning curve. I can only move forward from this. Learn not to let someone occupy my thoughts and let myself get in such a tizzy over a boy. It isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth all of this. I’ve ruined my first semester of second year, I see that now as it draws to a close. But maybe this is what I needed. Maybe I needed this to snap me out of it.

I regret everything wholeheartedly, but It’s not the end of the world. I am stronger than this.

University Thoughts – 2 Weeks in

I am two weeks into my twenties now. I’m in my second decade of life. And I’m not really sure what to do with myself. I’m in that mindset of being stuck again, like I’m trapped and I want to get out but I can’t do it. It’s like I’m desperately shaking the barriers, trying to push my head through, screaming at myself to do so but I can’t quite seem to make it.

I’m looking at everything through foggy glasses and it’s infuriating, but I’m worried too. I’m worried as to where I’m going. I feel like I’m giving up, I’ve started missing more and more of uni just because I can’t be bothered. I don’t care anymore. I didn’t even feel guilty and I’m sleeping. Oh my god am I sleeping. I’m angry at myself I want to snap out of this, I want to pull back the veil and properly see. But I can’t.

I’m self-aware, I am so very aware of what I am doing, what my brain is doing. But I can’t bypass it. I want to. I want to knuckle down, and write my essays, make plans, do something, cease moments, just feel present in the moment. I want to tear my hair out its that infuriating. I want to relish in my twenties, I want to dance, I want to laugh, I want to try new things, I want to feel free. I don’t want to feel trapped in my own skin. I want to feel like me again.

Turning 20 hasn’t taken me away. My sense of me has been chipping away for a while now. I want to return. It hurts so much. I just want to feel like me again. And I’m trying, I’m going to try. I really want to try.

University Thoughts- Time is running away

Time is getting away from me. I can’t keep up with this white rabbit and his pocket watch. Yet he’s always there, just at the corner of my eye tapping away at those ticking hands reminding me that they aren’t going to stop or turn back.

I feel like since coming back for second year I have squandered my time. Wasted all of it, doing nothing. I spend so much of my time in my living room sat doing nothing. I want to be out having adventures, making memories, yet I feel the majority of the memories I am making are from drunken nights out. Where’s the excitement from first year gone, that buzzing feeling, that playful, joyful ring of everything being new and excited? Now I feel jaded and crotchety. An old woman, looking back at her prime and wishing for the good old days. But that’s the problem I’m still in them, these are still meant to be the good old days. I’m constantly looking back and seeing it all covered in gold and twinkling lights and seeing the present as dull and grey and withering.

I’m almost twenty and what have I got to say for myself. What can I say about my life and what I’m doing with it? I’m waiting. That’s all I’m doing. I’m waiting and managing. But what sort of life is that if I constantly waiting for things to get exciting and just about managing through each day? That isn’t a life, I want to have a life that I can look back on when I’m ninety and say look what I did, look at those mistakes, look at those successes, remember those tears, remember those smiles. Just look at all these memories.

Life is what you make it though. I can’t be angry about wasting time, because I have to cease it. I need to cease these moments, because when am I going to be as free as I am now?

 

University Thoughts – Souls

It hurts.

Being alone hurts, though I suppose it would hurt more if I knew what it was like at the other end. If I knew what it was like to have my soul warming to another, be entwined with another. My soul has only ever known me, it hasn’t even been in the position to start to know another. I think that’s what hurts.

Everyone has had that chance. So many people around me have had their soul meet another. Have their heart suddenly race, their face smile when they get a message from them. But also to have that smile falter, to have tears fall, have their heart break and have a fire pour out from the cracks. I haven’t had that.

It’s just empty.

And it feels ever-so like the emptiness is expanding. Especially when so many around me are finding someone to make them feel less alone. To make them feel special, to make their heart skip at the sight of their smile and words. To ache like they have never ached before. But me…

I don’t know that feeling. Don’t know what it’s like to hurt like that. Have the hurt be so intense that you could burst, have someone hold my soul and be capable of hurting it. I am told I am lucky. Told never to find another soul because it’ll only bring pain. But that’s easy to say when you have felt the pain, because you’ve known the happiness.

I’ve never known the happiness.

It’s consuming me. Swallowing me whole. Yearning to know what it’s like, I want to understand. I want to have my soul learn about another, I don’t need to be entwined I just want to know what it’s like to feel irrevocable bound to someone. To have them consume every thought within my brain.

Because right now the only thing that consumes my brain is myself. My own piercing lonesome thoughts, watching the world go past. Watching friends hold hands and share those smiles of early knowing. Where the corners just crease and their eyes are filled with nothing but warmth. Familiar laughs and comfort, and jokes and jibes that can only be said after knowing someone’s soul with every piece of your own. The hurt too. Have the memory of their smile send your heart sinking and your eyes blue. Or to have the memory of them leave you nothing but cold and memories so old they have no connection to who you are anymore.

I just feel lost.

I don’t need another soul for me to know where my own is. I know who I am, I am whole without another one joining mine. Though it doesn’t stop the feelings of being trapped in a dark forest, with every path covered in brambles and having to pull myself through painfully and bloodily.

I am told there are souls that would like to get to know my own. But my soul doesn’t seem to want to get to know theirs, and neither does it believe them. It knows feelings are so often confused by desperately wanting and desperately needing. That these wants and needs are projected on someone who shows you kindness. That’s all those souls think, they think they want to get to know mine. But I see through it all, I know the truth.

And the truth causes me to hurt even more.

As at the end of the day I’m destined to feel this way…and know that it’s partly through my own design that that is the case.