I messed up.




These last few months have been really dramatic. It has been demanded of me by my circumstances to learn how to be in college, be on my own, be a better student, and be single, all at once. I have had to readjust my whole thinking of how I am to approach my life, and I'm freaking out. I feel as if myself and the things in my life are just out of control. I like to have control over what is going on in my life, and change can feel so out of control. Change, true in nature and habit, has turned things upside down, and for the last few months I have been a neurotic mess.

What I have discovered is that when things get traumatic and complex, people search to simplify their lives and turn life black-and-white, when in reality it is gray. The context in which I have seen this happen is in terms of religion, but I believe that it is a true occurrence in many other aspects of my life. I have been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to figure out or make sense of a relationship, the nature of christianity and religion, how I am going to have fun in college without feeling shameful, how to make friends, how to be self-sufficient, how to improve myself, and how to forget someone who has or is going to forget you. How exhausting. I have been trying to place all these issues into little boxes with little labels so that I may be able to store them neatly in the back of my mind and out of sight. Sure, I may have said that life isn't black and white, but then why do I still exhaust myself trying to make it something it is not?


Because I want to have control over these parts of my life, even though in reality, I really have very little control. The reason why I so desperately want to have control is because I let the state of my circumstances control my general happiness.


So first off, I am going to take a HUGE dose of chill. I need to relax. 
I have the REST OF MY LIFE to figure some of these things out.

And there are some things that are truly out of my control.


So why spend this time worrying about some of these things? What I do have control over is how I handle myself and what I choose to get me down.


So goal for this week? RELAX. Take a very well deserved break from the questions, self evaluation and scrutiny, and the "what ifs". Just CHILL OUT. 


And hopefully, I will find peace in my mind and maybe even in my soul, knowing that life is messy. Things are not black and white, and they are not supposed to be. What a boring world we would live in if things were so simple. Just as messy as it makes life, I also believe that it can make things quite wonderful and deep, below the surface of the simply two-dimensional. 


I will have plenty of time later to worry about life, but right now I am still in that grace period before the real world, and I'm sure there will be plenty to worry about in the real world. I don't want to burn myself out before the really hard stuff begins. 


Knowing me, I will probably wake up tomorrow and I will be stressing about something. I will fail at this. But at least I am conscious that I need to stop running, close my eyes, take a deep breath, and look around at all the beautiful things that are happening in the now. And with that starts the process...


And to just make things more interesting, I found this post from another site. It has some great tips on making life a little more simple. I like 49 and 55. 


http://www.marcandangel.com/2010/11/01/60-ways-to-make-life-simple-again/