University Thoughts – The Beast Tangled in my Chest

When the lights turn off and cheeks find themselves nestled in soft that is when something within your mind gets ignited. As if someone has lit the fuse and the fireworks begin to go off. Every time there is a lull between bangs you find your mind wandering into a sweet serenity of calm, quiet, of sleep. But some nights those fireworks just will not stop.

With each bang comes a new intrusive thought that cannot be banished. Thoughts and emotions that have been set aside for sleep, but not now. Here they are now in their loud, abrasive, colourful way. And tonight with it comes fear.

Like a gurgling beast resting within my chest and curled around my rib-cage it was once sleeping, once dormant. But the fireworks awoke the beast and at once it stiffens in surprise it’s limbs locked around inside you, suddenly tighten. The beast is alert and so every part of you is too. The fireworks keep on banging, scaring the beast more and more. because with each bang comes a new thought, a new emotion, a new problem, and a new fear. Something that you weren’t aware of before, and in the dark it seems ten times worse. Because this beast curled around inside me, doesn’t like the dark, doesn’t like how everything is distorted and how everything is louder in the dark.

I’m afraid. And nothing in the dark will stop these fireworks from going off, nothing will settle the beast, because its awake now. It took long enough to lull it to sleep last time, I worry how long it’ll now.

University Thoughts – I’m Scared

My first year of University finished on Friday. My last deadline was met and the library books I had accumulated over the past essays were returned. I am now left without a purpose or motive. I wake up in the morning and I literally don’t have anything I need to go and do. Which is nice and liberating but also it’s very pointless and demoralising.

I need that purpose, and I need that structure to keep me sane. I already find myself resorting back to old versions of myself. I’m getting more anxious, the idea of making plans with friends fills me with that familiar dread in my stomach. I’m eating out of pure boredom and my mind is exhausted. There’s no passion for anything. There’s no oomph or motivation.

I have a week left being here at Uni until I head back. A week left in this room. My room. So many people don’t like their rooms in Halls. I love mine. It’s my room, my little home, my own place. It feels more of my room than my one back home does. I’m dreading leaving it. Because this time I’m not coming back to it.

Part of me is looking forward to going home though. I feel the need to cleanse and revitalise my life and come back to Uni for second year renewed and better. It’s like I’m running on the last dregs of my battery right now, and I need to go back and plug myself in.

So part of me is ready to say goodbye. But there’s another part of me. A bigger part of me that just wants to hold onto everything as tight as possible and never let go. I’m not ready to move forward. Not ready to let go, because…I think, I’m scared. I’m scared to let go of what has now become my familiar, because I’m scared of what is waiting for me. I don’t have a clue where I’m going, but at least I know where I am. So when I say goodbye, I’ll be lost and scared and a version of myself that doesn’t know how to cope with that.

She’s here and she doesn’t know how to cope or manage very well. She’s good at pretending, but inside she is screaming. She’s running around in a forest with no sense of direction, so it feels like she’s in a maze more than a forest. I didn’t realise until now, didn’t realise at all.

I’m scared.

Thought no. 18 – Maze of Life

Why is it that humans always stay doing something they hate or being somewhere they hate? It’s because we fear failing at something we love. We fear failure and think we may as well stay somewhere we hate than try for something we love because where we are right now, we are safe. We hate where we are but we are comfortable with our surroundings and safe in them. If we were to lose this safety we would be stuck in the unknown, and humans hate the unknown, so we carry on doing what we hate. Making us very upset humans.

I am, I suppose, in this position as I know there are so many things I want to do and need to do and I am so overwhelmed by it all  that it is easier not to do anything. Just to sit here, because I am safe. Putting yourself out there is a very difficult and daunting thing. We so often crack under this need that we never end up even trying. It is easier to say you will do something rather than taking that leap and actually do it. I suppose taking that leap means we are moving forward, or taking a step back in a way. But it automatically means we are leaving that part of our life, and change is always scary. So we stay put, hating the fact that we are where we are, but we can’t motivate ourselves to escape, but also we don’t know how.

We are never taught as children how to deal with these sort of things in life. We are taught how to write and how to read. How to subtract and add, times and divide. I’ve been taught about osmosis, the digestive system, electricity, how to find the hypotenuse in a triangle, how to work out what X is in an algebraic equation. I have been taught how to give directions in french, how volcanoes are formed. But I am not taught how to escape, or how to move forward, or how to go about achieving something I love. I have only ever been taught things to help me pass my exams. Sure some of those things may help me later on in life, but I am not taught how to pass the different hurdles life throws at me. I am just expected to learn by myself. Or perhaps I am not meant to learn how, maybe I am just excepted to do, or maybe I meant to join the majority of the human race and get stuck in this trap. Sometimes I think that life is a trap. But a trap from what I do not know.

Actually perhaps it isn’t a trap, it is a maze and as humans only a few of us can escape and the rest of us keep on running into dead ends. Some are brave enough to turn back the way they came and start again. Other’s are strong enough to take a step back and run into this dead end and hope to come out the other side. Most of us are too scared to try either route, so we stay there. At the dead end. Then there are some, who when stuck at a dead end stop and think for a while and they call out for help. And someone. Anyone. A friend, family member or even a stranger come along and offer you a leg up and they help you over the top of the dead end so you can reach the path on the other side. Either way we are all stuck in this maze of life and we are all running into dead ends. So good luck with your maze, I hope you don’t have to stay at that dead end for too long, because you know there are other options than just staying there.