Not Doing So Well: Day 222: 400 Days in Exile

I've been hitting new lows lately. I already wasn't on a particular high , but on December 15 I got some bad news.... and I... haven't been handling it well.

I did something very nice for Turtle Man, more or less before this bad news, but he did not receive it until after and I don't think he understands that he is dealing with two different Little Tornados.

The one before was a muted storm - not doing super well, but not doing poorly.
Now, I"m a tempest. My emotions are everywhere. I'm sad all the time, which is something I am NOT used to. My body image is in the toilet. My sense of self worth in general is suffering.

All of these feelings, including some anger I should have expressed to Turtle Man but instead kept it bottled up, pretty much exploded when I was on vacation with all of my firends and I feel like any good will I earned is gone. And that I am just terrible and worthless and.... it's just all a little too real.

I go back and forth from being angry and sad and whenever I'm happy I feel like I don't deserve to be and I go back to being angry or sad.

I just want to sleep indefinitely.

I don't know.

*Shrugs*


Little Tornado

A lapse of time (400 Days of Exile: Day 24)

My first real lapse in posting.

The stresses of the CPA exam has been getting me, so I apologize. I probably won't post much until this part is over on July 2.

I've started pulling 12 hours a day. Between that and some bad news Turtle Man got that I was trying to be supportive for, blog updates fell to the wayside.

I don't feel like getting into it.

Mood: Hopeless

400 Days of Exile: Day 2

I realize I provided very little details of the condition of my exile.

I am still exhausted from the move so I will be as brief and concise as possible.

In short, my lease was up. My job doesn't start until August 9th - in the city, Thank God. So, looking at a couple months of no income, draining my savings account to spend three months in the city didn't seem too smart of an idea.

Additionally, I am currently studying for the CPA exam and have no life and won't be having much of a summer anyway - it would have been a summer of seclusion if not a summer of exile.

Now, I already know what you're thinking. 3 months = 90 days (give or take), why 400?

Well... I plan to stay at home until August 2016.

The reasons are twofold:

The simplest being - it really is economical. I can save almost $20,000 in rent and food alone by staying home for a year. Which, is, you know, nice.

However, I have a bigger motivation. My mother, bless her heart, is a wonderful woman. But very conservative and can be guilty of manipulation at times.When I was younger, I was terrified of her for no reason and that worked well enough to keep me in line. But, as I got older, the fear started to ebb, so she used another leverage point: money. Simply put, if I did not behave in a way she wished she would threaten cut funding to a, b, and c. (A. B. and C usually being college, really)

They were usually silly things like don't get a tattoo, which were very easy to live without. I didn't like being held back, but who was I to challenge my parents' generosity?

But, I think I have gotten to the age where "mommy not paying for stuff" shouldn't be a reason I base my decisions around anymore. By staying at home for a year, I can build a cushion of money where my mother;s input and advice will always be welcome, but never more than advice.

Ultimately, I want my decisions to be my own. I do not want to depend on anyone,

And, unfortunately for me, the quickest way to do that is to live at home for a bit.

Little Tornado

Random Meandering 4: Choosing What To Share Online

I think I can sum up every issue I've ever had with keeping a blog updated was what can and can not be shared online.

It is quite easy and somewhat cathartic to express the issues and problems you are having in your life with the facelessness and anonymity of the internet. Except, of course, when you are not so anonymous. You have made your blog semi public, by hiding links to your updates in the midst of your silly Tweets. But it is not like you are explicitly advertising.

Your blog will remain obscure and largely unread, until you post something "wrong" or too personal - then everyone will read it and things can get... very bad.

I say this from experience. My experience being the one and only time I maintained consistency with any sort of blog format and that was when I had a video blog when I was 14 going on 15. When the boys of my grade discovered them, I was a pariah for the remainder of my high school career. The scars from their cruelty are still not fully healed, though, now, they are almost as faint as the scuffs on my knees from when I tripped and fell on concrete when I was 10. Which is to say that they don't trouble me much anymore, but I have not quite forgotten them.

But what am I afraid of?

I am 22 years old. I rarely/barely break the law and, if I do, it's unintentional. I've escaped the illegalities of my vices (drinking) when I turned the victorious age of 21 and I can now say publicly that a glass of wine never hurt anybody - without fact checking it's validity. I have a small, but stable social life. I have a cluster of forever friends and a slightly bigger cluster of fun-for-now friends that I enjoy being with - none that I believe I would offend by my unassuming blog.

So... fuck it.

Let's test what I can share and what I can't. I can't promise I won't be vague, but I can promise that I will try not to be.

Trivial Drivel 24: How I Got My Groove Back

I've kind of been taking this life changing ethics class.

Unfortunately I'm so stressed out all the time with taking 6 classes (5 undergrad and 1 grad) and working 30 hours a week while trying to get straight A's - not gonna happen this semester, by the way - that I can't enjoy it and concentrate on it like I'd like to.

Even so, I've learned so much about self control and having your own value system and they are all topics I want to write about on this blog someday.

But today, I want to talk about self esteem and self worth.

My professor posed a question today: "If tomorrow everything you have was gone - your family, your possessions, your friends - what would be left?"

For me, while losing everything would, quite frankly, suck, I wouldn't be left with nothing. I would be left with me. A sarcastic, down to earth, dreamer who is optimistic, enthusiastic, and gets trapped in her head sometimes. I like to be outside, on the beach or in a field. Give me a pen and a pad of paper and I could write down all the stories I ever wanted to write but kept getting distracted by things and people.

I don't know how many people would know themselves. Before I was 16? There was no way I could tell you who I was.

My professor said that people who lose things they love tend to have a better idea of who they are. "What does not kill you, makes you stronger." I don't know if that is necessarily true for everyone, but it is true for me.

Now, my professor lost everything when she was 9 - her family, her money, her nice clothes, but that is her story to tell. I didn't lose everything, but when I was 16, it sure felt like I did.

I had always been the weird one, skinny, awkward. I had had a shot of having a real friend group but I had the horrible combination where I was intelligent, passionate, and dramatic. I wanted to read epic stories and learn new things, but I also wanted the human drama that is usually only accompanied by the popular crowd. The smart kids were too boring for me and I was too "wild" for them. The popular kids were too vapid for me and I was too "weird" for them.

I had attained this truly awful human being of a best friend in junior high, I'll call her Frenemy. She was super fun to be around but it was laced with her consistently putting me down and dictating what was "cool." (Literally, everything, too. Down to what razors and shaving creams were "cool" and which were "lame." I had to BEG my mom to get me Satin Care over Skintimate. It was obnoxious.) Plus she had gained a posse who were also not very nice to me. They bred me to be very insecure. They would joke that I was the 40-year Old Virgin - that movie had just come out - and that no one would ever want to date me. Boys were not exactly beating down my door at the time, so, who was I to prove them wrong?

However, by staying friends with Frenemy, who desperately wanted to be popular, she got me an "in" with the popular girls in eighth grade and that's when I met Free Spirit, who then introduced me to Blondie.

They became my best friends and they actually liked me and were nice to me. They tried to build me up - and change me in the process, but whatever - instead of kick me down and make me feel hopeless. And they were cool! They were the coolest of the cool girls. Which made me feel cool too! Alas, I wasn't.

I remained best friends with them all through freshman year and into sophomore year. But then, tragedy struck! I had been videoblogging at the time and some boys at my school discovered it and I became publicly weird. I was jeered at in the hallway and people were relentlessly mean about it. My friends had know about them but once they stopped getting invited to parties because of me, they started to distance themselves.

Then I actually had no one.

Or so I thought.

I didn't want anyone else, I just wanted them. Honestly, I loved them so much before I even knew what love was and my heart was torn to shreds when they left me.

I spent about 6 months without any friends.

And boy, it sucked. It was super painful and awful but I wouldn't change any of these events for the world.

Because in those 6 months, for the first time since puberty, I actually LIKED myself. I learned who I was and what I liked. I learned that liking video games and fantasy novels wasn't a bad thing. I made friends with a girl in my science class that I had always clicked with, Tender Heart, and opened my mind and heart to things I had never experienced before.

I became better and confident and if I had continued hanging out with those girls, I wouldn't be where I am today.

This self-discovery, self-knowledge is not new, obviously, but it is ever changing. Every day I try to love myself a little more so I can continue being the confident, enigmatic, and a little zany woman that proudly pounds the streets of Chicago in stiletto Heels and torn up short shorts (in summer, in winter it's Uggs, Uggs, and more Uggs - They look like bear paws and I like feeling like a snow bear).

I know my direction got a little back and forth there in the middle but I've been up since 7 am and I need to go to bed so I can study for finals tomorrow. LEAVE MY BRAIN ALONE!

Happy finals to all my college kids out there and I hate everyone else,

xoxo

Little Tornado


** DISCLAIMER ** Free Spirit and I still remain close friends and I have gotten some solid apologies from her some time ago. She is a wonderful person, one of my dearest friends, and her tattoo actually came out a lot better than I thought it would.
I may not exactly get the path she's going down right now, but that doesn't mean it's a wrong path.

WWPD
(What Would Pocahontas Do?)