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.

Thought from trying to get to sleep

As  get older I am becoming more aware, and yes i know that is a common result from growing up. But as I do I realise I am not quite so alone with the way I think and feel. I am meeting a wider range of people; I’m not stuck talking and seeing the same bunch each day as I once was. The problem is that now I am not quite so alone I see others suffering worse than me, we have struggled though/ are struggling through the same things yet they are worse than me. They have more reasons. Meaning I, meaning that I am diminishing how I feel because I haven’t got it as bad as someone else or “have I really got this problem? or am I actually going through the same thing as them because clearly we are going through something completely different.”

Comparing yourself with others is always going to reap negative results because you either put yourself down or bring yourself up, usually the former, but you can’t truly compare yourself with others. There are too many differentiating factors, just because someone may seem as if they are worse than you it doesn’t mean that they are. But it also doesn’t diminish how you are feelings, because your feelings aren’t less important or less meaningful or painful or whatever. How you are feeling still matters! The main problem is there is a part of my brain that understands this completely the other part very clearly does not. Two sides battling it out and both use such great logic, it’s hard to chose to believe one over the other and believing in both just makes it worse because they start battling out.

A Thought from 5/2/15 – Weakness or Strength

She told me crying released the tension, but I’d much rather keep it in. I don’t like people seeing me cry, sometimes it’s because I don’t want to seem weak. But in truth it is because I don’t like people knowing what’s going on in my head. Crying reveals I am upset or hurt. I don’t like people knowing that. I wouldn’t divulge that so I hate it when my body acts accordingly and against my wishes. I know that crying is not a weakness and keeping it all in isn’t strength, but it feels that way. I feel as if it’s easier to pretend everything is okay when no one can see what’s happening in my mind. I feel stronger that way.

A Thought from 2/2/15 – Drowning

Do you ever feel as if you are dying? As if you are dying really slowly, I mean it is not that far off the mark, because we are technically all dying. Born to die, we’ve been dying since the moment we were born, extremely slowly. But it’s as if I am dying right now, well, metaphorically speaking for I don’t know what it is like to die. Perhaps this is drowning. That’s it. I’m drowning.

I’m losing the ability to care or rather I am caring, far too much and don’t want to care. And it’s suffocating me, I’m drowning in it all. My brain is pressing against my skull as it fills up and it is driving me insane. It may only last a couple of days, or weeks, but then it shall return. I always seem to start drowning again and again and again. I am doomed to drown in life it would seem. For I am incapable to know how to handle it and survive it and enjoy it.

I wrote a thought for everyday last year, and my tagline for it was a thought a day keeps the madness away. And in retrospect it did in some strange manner. Writing it would seem is exceptionally therapeutic for me, as for the past month not writing like this, not seeking that escape everyday; I’ve missed it. Perhaps not actively, but looking back on it I have. Maybe that is why I am drowning in life again, or it is the beginning of the year, I seem to remember drowning this time last year too…

Thought no.365 – The End

Well this is it…the end! Everything reaches it end whether it be my contract at what was my currently job today, or the end of these blog posts or even the end of the year, all of which tie in together in a neat end bow today. It’s been long this journey of 2014 and writing a thought everyday (well, almost, but I am human, I do forget). It’s New Years Eve and with it will come the passing of the year 2014 and bring forth the year 2015. I’m not big on the whole celebration of New Years, its just another end and another beginning, but really its just a kick up the back-side for everyone to get their stuff together and try and not waste another year and get those things done they always say they will.

But I’m not going to think about off into 2015 land and what it will bring and what I plan to do, because it’ll just give me too much of a headache. I want to look back at 2014. And lucky me I have a whole blog full of my year, not a diary but just a small recount of what was going on in my head each day. Just a thought, nothing more nothing less. And I’ve picked a favourite from each month:

January – Thought no.18 – Maze of Life

February – Thought no.59 – Waiting

March – Thought no.77 – The demons will appear 

April – Thought no.11 – It’s kind of a funny story

May – Thought no.140 – The right place at the right time

June – Thought no.175 – Happy Thoughts

July – Thought no.187 – New Camera

August – Thought no.221 – Where are the words?

September – Thought no.251 – Friendships

October – Thought no.278 and 279 – Welcome Rain

November – Thought no.310 – Time

December – Thought no.351 – Holding on

I hope you all enjoy those thoughts as much as I did. For next year I shan’t do a thought everyday, but I don’t believe I’ll completely give up on blogging, this blog shall not be abandoned but at least now I can write when there actually is the muse and motivation to do so.

Here’s to 2015 and what the year may bring, I hope you all have a great year and let it be filled with all the adventures and happiness it possibly can!

Thought no.344 – Sudden thoughts

I honestly don’t know how to write right now. I know what i want to say and what I want to talk about it’s at the edge of my fingertips but the words just aren’t flowing. How I want to phrase things how I want to phrase my thoughts and feelings isn’t working, I just can’t seem to convey what I want to convey correctly. The only way I can is by saying, I feel alone, so very very alone.

Thought no.342 – Saying yes

I hate saying yes to something, I hate commiting to what saying yes will bring and that’s because my mind is perpetually stuck in the state of “what-if?” I am a “what-if?” kind of girl and it is the most frustrating things in the world because I end up doing so little and not taking chances because I am so scared to because what-if?

I wish my mind set was “why not?” instead of “what-if?” because I bet I would live a lot more and experience a lot more things, because I wouldn’t be so anxious and afraid. I’d be adventurous and open and life would seem an awful lot more exciting. But its hard to change the way you think, its hard to change who you are, because you aren’t aware of you becoming the way you are it just happens, and then one day you become self-aware. But the problem with being self-aware is that you are such and suddenly you making these decisions is even worse because you are aware of what you are doing but you can’t change the way you think.

I want to become a why not rather than a what-if I am going to try but it shan’t be easy. Changing your mind never is.

Thought no.87 – I’m stuck

At the moment writing a post is truly hard work and so I have been resorting to poetry and the world of non-fiction writing has just been too painful for me. I have tried each time to start writing something but then it just doesn’t work out so I resort to writing a poem. Which is fine and everything, but this is a thought for each day, not a poem, which it has started to become. Non-fiction is difficult for me, mostly because it is real, it’s real life and I don’t really have much of a life. So non-fiction is quite a foreign practice. I could write a story, or write an analytical essay on why the writer had done this for their work and what effect it has or whatever. But non-fiction, like this is extremely difficult. All just seems quite flimsy and without substance and without worth or without a point. Maybe the biggest problem is because I live in a routine and so each week I go through the same though process which is why I am finding it so difficult to write on a thought because I have already written on them. I have already expressed my thoughts which are going to be repeated each week because I live in the same week. I might have a different topic in my lesson, or a different conversation with a friend, or a different dinner, but fundamentally it is the same week.