6/30/23

Hello, my tender little ladybugs. Blessed be the waking of Summers's warmth and the hot embrace of July's ever-growing green. I thought it was fitting that I do today's website post as a blog, rather than an article or essay because this will most likely be my last post for a few weeks, as my return to the motherland is imminent (I fly to PA tomorrow). A part of me has the desire to film an episode of the podcast at the airport tomorrow morning, but only fate will decide. As of now expect a post on Sunday this week and next, and maybe a podcast one or both of those weeks. The most likely outcome is I film a podcast during the week and will post it next weekend. Regardless a return home is always swarming with feelings of sorrow, anxiety, excitement, and nerves, though which I'm feeling is up for discussion. This week I really want to touch base and give a little life update, as I've been attempting to grow the website, my own voice in terms of what the blog used to be (therapy) has quickly diminished. 

Back to my roots.

 This week has felt like at least three. Each day, morning and evening, I can entirely separate into two. Though that's not to say, in any way, that it's been bad. My main focus recently has been allowing myself to feel, the good, the bad, the ugly. When I'm tired I'll lie down, when I have the energy I go for a run, when I'm hungry -aside from right now, locked at work- I eat. And as a result, I have felt much more enjoyment in my day-to-day life. Sometimes it can be as easy as seeing a friend again 12 hours after you saw them last; Adam. I think one of my biggest pitfalls in attending University is the ideals of what college should feel like. Partying, for example, as I've mentioned a few times, is a lot of people's focus at college, especially ones in Arizona known for being a party school. And unfortunately, I just don't enjoy that environment. And for so long I felt an obligation to do it anyway, sacrificing my own wants, my own feelings, and my own comfort, to contort my personality to fit others' preconceived perceptions of who I was. Not to say if my friends are throwing a party I won't stop by, but its the assumption, the expectation that as your friend I'm obligated to attend every event, every party, every get-together that you have, regardless of my interest in it, that kills me inside. And because of that, I've been focusing more on who I surround myself with, how they make me feel, and how I make them feel, in order to attain a life I'm actually enjoying. In my head, my anti-socialness is my downfall, its why I don't have friends, its why I'm single, its why people think I'm weird, but that thought process is fueled by others' input; others telling me I'm a bad friend for not wanting to go, even if I went anyway, others saying how much fun they had and said fun was entirely consumed by alcohol and uppers. I'm not boring for not wanting to go to a party celebrating your breakup, you're boring for having nothing else to do. 

All this to say I've been doing well. I've been spending time with friends who have similar ideas of going out and enjoying ourselves. And for right now, I'm loving every second of it. It's becoming easier to say yes to making plans, and I've come to a realization that I thought I had already come to; forcing things doesn't always work. Going into college you're told to get out of your comfort zone. Join clubs, go to parties, meet people, be outspoken, be extraverted. Not everyone is. For the longest time, my concern in life was 'getting out there'. Pushing myself beyond what I was comfortable with, not necessarily to fit in, but so that I and my friends would be experiencing life together, and I wouldn't fall behind. But after a certain amount of time, work, and hangovers, I realized I had fallen right back down the chute I climbed out of my Junior and Senior years of highschool. I was living a life that was for an idealized version of myself I never got to finish creating, a version that had the mania lasted a few more days, had that guy come over after all, had I never reached out, we would all be stuck with today. But as hard as it is to deal with your brain on bad days, that doesn't mean it always needs to be that way, sometimes your brain is actually looking out for you. It's hard to distinguish between the two, what am I actually uninterested in and what is just anxiety telling me to stay in one more night? I stopped listening to my brain altogether. She had led me astray too many times, that I took it upon myself to allow my guard down and "yes man" my way through much of my Freshman and Sophomore years, leaving my hurling down a storm drain at 3 am, sleeping on a man's mattress in his living room, doing a mans dishes, and swallowing every ounce of individual thought to adhere better to the masses; I know I don't want to go, I know I won't feel good, I know I'm too sad, I know I don't have the energy; I don't want them to be mad at me. It left me feeling more hollow than I ever have. 

The bright side is, feeling better was as simple as not doing that anymore. I spent so long thinking I was sad because I wasn't doing enough, going out enough, going on dates enough, but there's a part of me that thinks those attempts at doing what I thought I should be doing were the root of the problem. Accepting what your niche is is such a huge step in the healing process, and, somewhat of a sidenote, such an important part of aging. A lot of us, readers or myself, are at a pivotal age in which were figuring ourselves out...again. We all had moments in highschool, getting closer to becoming a legal adult, maybe even afterward at 18-19, where we thought we either had or begun to figure ourselves out. Our lives our interests, we chose majors and careers, went out on our own more, making and spending money that belonged to us, and finally came into our own. I know I can't be the only one who that thought once I was 18, that was it, I finished growing up. And now I'm over the halfway mark to 21, the year is 2023, I have an apartment and am going into my junior year of college, and need to ask myself if chicken nuggets for dinner two days in a row is healthy. I used to wake up at 6:30 am and make a protein shake and go to school for 8 hours and workout on my lunch break and come home and skate to the gym and stay for 2 hours then come home and do homework, I can't work a four-hour shift now without needed a nap and a join within 30 minutes of going home. Growing up is not linear. And just like between middle and high school we had to figure out how we wanted to be perceived, who we wanted to be friends with, and what we liked to do, we have to do it all over again in our 20s, and I think that's what is happening now. Now that the heat and excitement of freshman orientation are long gone, and the settling into adult life that happens Sophomore year, I feel like adult Christian Reid is ready for release. The one who has wine with dinner with his parents smokes a cigarette instead of a vape, watched hour-and-a-half art pics instead of Marvel movies, and apparently loves hanging out with Adam 24/7. Adjust to adjusting. As I said in last week's podcast, telling yourself you should be healed by now will only make the healing less smooth, and as I was saying with finding the right friends, expectations kill reality. When you go into something, anything, with an expectation of what the 'thing' should feel like, taste like, sound like, and look like, you only halt the natural progression of your life where those expectations are met in due time. Stressing yourself out, wanting it to happen now, is null. 

I think as a generation a lot of us are really good at villainizing ourselves. While I will admit there are probably more of us with too big of an ego than there are with too little, my people know what I mean. Being critical of yourself, in a lot of our parents' generations, was seen as a good thing. Being able to tell when you fucked up, when you could've done better, when you're doing something wrong, but -and maybe I'm being too broad with this- I think there's a lot of us that took that to heart. We've become overly critical, and even the ones whose criticism isn't directed towards themselves are overly critical of each other, of everyone. And the result is a lot of 19, 20-something year old's who can't stand their lives because it's nowhere near what they want for the end goal. But you're not near the end, or the goal. Were working towards it, and along the way, there were bumps, bruises, and mishaps that maybe even the day later you can acknowledge you could've avoided. And accepting those bumps, the scratches on your skin, the pimple on your chin, the apartment you dont like, the classes you dont want to take, it's all part of it. You're alive to live, and not every second of that is going to be pleasant, but the attitude I've taken is you won't be able to see where the unpleasant leads unless you keep following it. There's this culture surrounding the question "What is the meaning of life?" and that question singlehandedly destroyed the meaning of life. What is a seashell meaning in life? Or a fern? Or a Horseshoe Crab? Beings and lives that have existed long before us and long after us that never made iPhones, never evolved to make Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, and have been doing swell for millions upon millions of years. The meaning of life is to live. To feel every ounce of sadness and joy and love and anger and passion and hate and disgust and to do it all together. No, we weren't meant to have capitalism or debt or Trump of healthcare, but that's what we have, and that's what life is now, and we will get absolutely nowhere complaining that it's not fair. We just need to do it. And if we don't want to do it then we need to stop it. You don't need some omnipotent power telling you what to do. Just yourself. And maybe a friend.