Antithesis

A photo I took in October of 2011.
This was one of those days.

Every now and again, I'll have one of those days in which I can't shake a feeling of, for lack of a better word, badness. That's a terrible word to use there, but it's the first one that came to mind, and in a strange way, it fits.

A terrible word for a terrible feeling.

These days seem pretty random. Sometimes they're set off by something specific, but more often than not, I just feel bad...generally I feel bad in specific ways, and those different ways pile on top of each other until it's just a general feeling of badness (there's that word again).

On those days, I get random urges to tweet really melodramatic things. Sometimes, those things don't even pertain to the way I'm feeling. For example, yesterday I tweeted, "Perpetually looking over one's shoulder is no way to live." It sounded kind of sad, and kind of paranoid, so I tweeted it, because I was maybe feeling a little sad, and maybe a little paranoid too. I have no idea why. I get random urges to pour my little melodramatic heart and soul into my many social media outlets and to my close friends via text (if you're one of these close friends, and you've gotten one of these texts, you know how horribly annoying and pointless it can be). Lately, I've done a stellar job of fighting those urges (except for my paranoid-shoulder-tweet). This blog is my attempt at channeling all of that badness and turning it into something...not so bad.

If I let thoughts and emotions live in my head for too long, I get kind of crazy. My husband notices...I'm the least careful about holding it in around him. I'm very sad to say, he has to take the brunt of it...when I let things boil in my head, sometimes the steam burns the ones closest to me. Nine times out of ten, that's Vince. He has to deal with his burns, while trying to keep the pot (that's me) from boiling over, as well as trying to keep me from getting burned, too. Thinking about it that way makes me sad for him, and at the same time, makes me very, very grateful to have such a loving, compassionate, patient man.

I've had these spouts of badness since I was a kid. A part of me thinks it's just my lack of control over my emotions getting the better of me. That makes me want to learn to control it, and makes me feel like I've failed somehow by not being able to. Another part of me thinks I have some as-yet undiagnosed chemical imbalance and need to see a doctor or a therapist (that's the easiest option to "fix). And yet another part of me thinks that I have some deeply rooted issues in the depths of my brain that, every now and again, peek out to see if they can join the party, but they don't peek out long enough for me to see them in their entirety. Rather, I see them for only a moment, and rather than being able to deal with the issue, the root, as a whole, I focus on the effects or symptoms of that issue. Namely, comparing myself to what I see as incomparable beauty, the idea that I'm unlovable,  the idea that I'll never live up to an expectation that's always going to be unspoken, but in my head, will always be there.

The most likely scenario is that it's a lovely mix of all three of these things.

In a way, this blog is just my very long-winded way of melodramatically-tweeting-over-140-characters. In another way, it's my way of writing out these "major issues" that I think I have, so that I can see them in black and white. Seeing things in black and white always helps put things in perspective.

Some days are bad and some aren't. I suppose that's normal, but I'm tired of it being a toss of the dice for me. My goal is to bring the bad days into the light, so that they're eventually forced to become their antithesis. I'm not sure how I'm going to do that exactly, but I have a few ideas to try. I'm going to talk to my husband before all of the emotion I carry boils over and hurts him. I'm going to try positively redirecting the tangle of thoughts in my brain. I'm going to quit comparing my photos to photos of other people. And lastly, I'm going to try and limit my social-media-time, because as great as Facebook and Twitter can be, they're both always excellent venues to commit self-esteem suicide when left to my own devices.

A photo from a few days ago.
This was not one of those days.

I actually wrote this last night, and waited for a new day and a new frame of mind to decide if I wanted to post it or not.

Now that I've decided I will post it, I'd like to ask that no one take the time to tell me that I shouldn't compare myself to others, that there's no unspoken expectation of me, and that I am lovable. Rather, if you choose to comment, I'd love for you to share your struggles with me, too. Or maybe you could tell me something that helps you when you're having a bad day. I cherish the encouragement and love that the people in my life are always so willing to pour out on me, and I appreciate it more than any of you can ever know, but this time, I'd rather hear about you.