I wrote this post on the 15th of November 2017.
I did not publish it.
Publishing it felt like I was admitting to failure and much as I’d like to think I am fearless, admitting to failure is not something I would readily do.
It means that I have not been enough in one way or another and who’d want not to be enough?
Funny enough, I am in that exact space, experiencing that same facet of life.To be honest, feeling my inadequacies has me concluding that these are just but aspects of the human condition and to a large extent, byproducts of having ambition.
But before we get into what has changed in one year, this is what I had drafted last year.
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15th Nov 2017…
Hello,
Are you well?
How are you today?
…
It has come to my attention that I have been in my feelings and in my head a lot this bottom quarter of the year. Especially after my birthday, I have been hitting lows so new to me, I cannot wrap my mind around these occurrences. It feels foreign, damning, painful and confusing all at once. It’s like I no longer recognise the girl in the mirror staring back at me.
I think I am frustrated.
I lie.
I am frustrated.
Every part of me feels confused.
My life is at a stage where most of my friends are either getting married or getting babies. It’s beautiful and amazing and I am happy for them. I really am. What’s perturbing is not even that I am not there. It’s that I am really tired and exasperated by people (who think they mean well) expecting me to achieve things according to their timeline.
I understand when my dear sweet mother asks when the grandchildren coming, and legitimately so, I have had discussions with her concerning that topic. She has such rights, she is my mother. We are close and we understand each other.
My bone of contention is with people who have the need to tie me down to their ideas of how my life should be and what hard and fast stage of life I should be at. People who walk around proposing diets I should be on, insisting I should not have broken up with a boyfriend, giving me timelines for occupancy of my uterus, yet they honestly have no stake in my life save for thinking they know me…
And I get it, I truly do. They, have convinced themselves that they mean well, but I do not take it kindly. If the same people looked into their hearts, they would realised that their questions, suggestions and all manner of ideas emanate from themselves and are for themselves. These notions have little or nothing to do with what I may want, need. They come from their own selfish interests concerning how the ongoings or outcome of my life would make them happier. It is a them-problem. Meanwhile, my life is a me-problem.
These people have no idea what challenges I have had, whether I am happy or not, whether I even want these things or not. All happens is, by projecting these notions on me, all one actually does is push me deeper into the idea that I have failed. I have come to realise this actually happens on a subconscious level and that’s the worst kind of sadness really. You don’t feel or see it when it latches onto you. And it follows me quite a lot. It’s like walking around with a permanent cloud over my head.
IT SUCKS!
Honestly, It is tiring. And my answer to all this shall always be “In God’s Time”.
Around a week ago, I came across a notebook I had named “The Dream”. In it I had written all these profound ideas at the beginning of my twenties about where I should be towards my thirties, what I should have achieved, whereI should be in life. I then lost the notebook and stopped dreaming I guess.
It’s evident as I am just but two years shy of thirty and I have not even achieved half of the ideas encompassed in “The Dream”. It’s almost like I lost that person.
But here is a new motto I am working on. The ability to just cut it out. Lemme say it louder for the people at the back… JUST CUT IT OUT…
JUST CUT IT OUT.
….This was to be continued…but it never was.
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17th Nov 2018…
I just turned twenty nine last month
I still have not achieved the things that I had thought I would have achieved by now. I even lost the notebook I had mysteriously found last year.
Maybe this is a sign I should come up with other dreams.
I was interacting with a tweep about a fortnight ago about a tweet he’d written and pinned. The tweet read, “My hope for the 2018 TL: More collaboration, less conflict”. He told me that he normally does not do new year resolutions, instead, he does themes. Maybe this is the way. I am working on the theme for my twenty ninth year!
Update: I am still not happy with people who share their opinions randomly and ask questions based on their expectations of you. Actually, my response is still “In God’s Time” and I still think it is insensitive to project your ideas or opinions on other people without authority to do so. Therefore, please..
JUST CUT IT OUT
In a twist… I choose to brag different and not mope around the ideas that I may have failed.
I choose to recognise the changes that have occurred in my life within the last year. To celebrate those as milestones.
I choose to appreciate the people in my life that have been a blessing. To love and choose those who have and still love and choose me.
I choose to love and honour my existence. To appreciate the hurdles, the pains, the challenges as instances that life has awarded me. Life seems to want to grow my strength and to mould me into a person I consider better than the person I was a year ago.
I choose, just like I did last year, to cut it out. To cut out the habit of only focusing on what I have not achieved and replace that with creating more bite sized methods of creating goals.
After all, I have the rest of my life to achieve things.
I choose to be happy.
Now and always.
I choose me and I honestly hope that you choose you too.
Be happy 🙂
Your’s
The Utopian Fantasy.
