My Eternal Happiness

I’m up late and have been grinding away at studying for my EMT class tomorrow night and decided to just write everything that’s on my mind out now. I’ve held all of this in for a long time because I don’t want to come off as some attention whore or drama queen. But whatever, I’m gonna be me. The things may come off as incomprehensible, random with lots of tangents, but it’s really just for me to look back upon. I hate pictures but I love reading stuff that I’ve written in the past because it allows me to see how much I’ve grown intellectually and maturely. I don’t need another snapshot of a memory, I want to remember my stages of life and the people that matter will stick through and i’ll see you around later anyways. I’m not really one for reminiscing dime-a-dozen parties or events. See, that’s an example of my infamous tangent. Anyways:

Over the course of the past year, I’ve been straying far from who I am. It’s cruel irony cause they say you do all your “self discovery” in college. But I felt like I knew who I was from the beginning and fell away from it. 

I had a bright outlook on life and really embraced everything that came my way; School, relationships, friendships, and my relationship with God was consistently growing from the ground up. It was far from perfect but for what it’s worth, I was trying to make something good of myself. During that time, even though things were up and down, I was happy with how things were going. I was living life without worrying about much, just being happy and taking the next step forward. So what did I do to mess everything up?

I got sidetracked. I got to thinking over insignificant things like “am I living as much as I can right now? Is there something else that my college career can provide me?” And from there it made me feel unsatisfactory of my current state. This then led me to question my priorities which at the time were: God, family, relationship, school, friends, health. 

Church and homegroup played a large part in my life in the beginning of college because everyone I was around was integrated into it so we worked as one syncretic group. I supposed when things changed, I reached a breaking point where I couldn’t rely on others to motivate me to continue my walk. I just decided I wanted to explore and play. This was during my 4th year. I couldn’t bear to waste another minute doing something I wasn’t sure of anymore so I ditched it completely. 

I started hanging out with my old friends from high-school. We were never really all that close but I made an effort to have fun and really delve into everything that college was about and they were the gateway for me to do so. It sounds immature I know, but it was what entertained me. For months it was sufficient and I’d come home happy and drunk most days of the week, feeling that I’d made a big mistake in terms of investing 3 years of my college life into church when I could’ve done something more fun like partying it up. Don’t get me wrong, some of the guys I hung out with are like brothers to me. This is purely a critique for myself.

So 12 months, hundreds of bottles of alcohol and crates of cigarettes later, here were are. I’ve come to the realization that I am no longer happy. I’ve changed my lifestyle from being happy to chasing happy. I’ve set my goals farther than I can reasonably reach. And from many people’s aspects, they feel as if I should be content with my progress. While I, on the other hand, feel deficient in my steps forward. My future is bright but I dull it with my constant strive to do something else to make me feel competent. Money and success doesn’t satisfy for long. I feel like an empty container and I keep filling myself up with meaningless goals, friendships, and relationships that drain me everytime I feel like it’s half full.

And then there are those people that really stood by me and tried to understand my state of mind. Even if I didn’t share my experiences, I believe that they knew what I was going through and genuinely cared about my well being. And I have reciprocated by ignoring them, feeling some sort of angst towards them, and downright lying to some to just not have to deal with talking about my lifestyle. I have such high criteria for myself already that I just can’t stand being judged so in a cowardly motion I just avoid the subject all together. 

I’ve been searching for some peak in happiness that comes maybe a couple times a month. I feel like a drug addict waiting for the next hit and I’m tired of it. For the most part, I feel like I’m a pretty reasonable logical person. When you put something into any relationship, regardless of how altruistic it may be, you subconsciously feel entitled for someone else to respond to your actions in one way or another. But I feel like I’ve been dumping my feelings and my everything into a seemingly bottomless pits and the only thing I am getting are the sounds of objects hitting the ground. But there’s really no one to blame except me. I put myself in these situations because I disregard my God given intellect and intuition and put the facts behind me and follow my heart.  The heart is usually wrong. If I like someone or am trying to build a friendship, I put my all into it because I don’t have a “half-ass effort” button to push it’s only full sprint or forget the point to the whole thing. And for that reason, I’ve burned myself out of whatever I had left to give to the point where I neglect other things. I naturally like being someone people can rely on for some reason so I spread myself thin. (My mom thinks I’m dependent on other people depending on me, confusing i know.) But there’s always a breaking point and I feel like I’ve reached it. Emily was asking me a week or two ago if I felt happy and I’m pretty open with her and I told her no. She was reiterating everything that I had in mind already but I kept ignoring it cause I was in a cycle and pattern of living already and it’s hard to change it. All the things I’ve built are becoming burdens to me.

Being me, I always do things systematically when it comes to fixing things. The first step for me is re-establishing my relationship with God. The 2nd is to re-establish my old good habits and get rid of my bad ones. 3rd is rebuilding the bridges i’ve burned with some friends and this person who’s been by my side the whole time so i’ll probably rack up my minutes this month haha. 

It’s really time for me to grow up and get out of this stage of life. I know what I need and have all the means to get it, I just need to really let go of the things of today that are holding me back. It’s gonna take some time but I like a good challenge :).

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson.