My Fear of Lethargy.

I have decided to concentrate a bit on framing what I am thinking. I am having a down day today, so I am going to frame my thoughts that have been rattling around in my mind.

I have literally just realised that I spend a lot of my time thinking, mostly subconsciously doing it, never forming any conclusions or helping me to progress from the same cycle, or perhaps it should be called a rut, of thinking. It is in fact worse if I subconsciously think, because it often bubbles to the surface, explodes and I end up saying something to myself replying to what I had been thinking about (I do have an irritating habit of talking to myself ALL the time!!) And the answer is rarely ever helpful. Another thing I do is go over and over and over until I almost go mad with things I should have done and not done. I again answer my thought with a sigh, exclamation, shout, groan, etc at these memories. I am a perfectionist, and of course nothing can ever be perfection and I constantly berate myself for not being perfect and simultaneously for striving to be perfect. Trust me, perfection is never perfect.

What has been really grating on me lately is that I am really lethargic at the moment. Well, it has been for longer than a moment. I know that I should be doing something but I procrastinate from doing anything. Then I feel bad for doing nothing, then I procrastinate further by doing nothing, well it is obviously something but nothing of worth like trawling the Internet and coming up with a million possibilities of perhaps what I should be doing, but thinking if only I could drive, I could get to that Pilate's class there, or if I had the courage to try that, perhaps I should do that job, maybe I should become that... what do I think of that career?... but I can't do that because of x, y and z.

I haven't felt this for a long time. Excusing myself from doing something by my inability to do it in some way. Feeling so capable and powered by achieving my degree (and yes we are back at this turning point of my relatively sort life- forgive my naivety to those older and wiser than me! I must be sounding like a broken record player!) so back to my degree and the feeling of fulfilment and something to strive for that drove me everyday to get up in the morning and go to my lecture, the library etc etc. In short, this has evaporated.

Now I know that university is not the be all and end all, and this is NOT what I am trying to convey to you. In fact, it was my degree that sustained me. I had fixated on something, but now it has gone, I have this vacancy of a part of me. I don't mean I am missing the degree, but the dedication towards something. At school, I made myself complete the work and not let myself down and to prove to the school I shouldn't be ignored (Gawd, I hated that place!) I was powered by the need to PROVE myself. It was lucky I could pull it off, otherwise I would have looked very foolish!!

Me and my mam had a conversation last night about my first year at university. It was awkward in places, and the worst skimmed over as per, but I stumbled over a few home truths over a shared bottle of wine with my mam. I was a wild child and my mam had despaired, but I came back to her, as she put it. Things culminated in the first year, particularly the first term. I had to look after myself for the first time, I had my independence, I was free to do what I wanted... and I did. I experienced the first joy of being 'naughty', of doing things I would never have done before! Silly things from wearing short skirts and staying out all night had been, up to this point, hitherto never participated in. In fact, I would perhaps consider it a rather libertine lifestyle I had in the first year. Drinking, smoking, drugs, sex... You name it, I would have given it a go. I used people and threw them aside as it suited me, as it had been done to me before. It is so easy to get on that slippery slope and slide all the way to the bottom, oh so easy with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a plethora of cheering mates in the other.

I thought I knew who I was before I stepped onto university soil. I thought I could withstand the rigours university posed. I thought, and I thought wrong. It resulted in a complete collapse. Total Destruction. I faced the abyss with no sense of self. Who was I? And genuinely I could not answer. Well, I can't answer now, but I have an innate feeling of who I am, and I know that if it is tested, I will not waver. I think it has been tested already and I am still around! I would say that this feeling has formed in the last year if truth be told. It has taken me two years, but in that time I never let go of striving to achieve what I went to university to do. The sense of proving myself, perhaps as an atonement for my behaviour in the first year. The third year saw me do it for a different reason thankfully. It can be exhausting continuously proving yourself.

It has always struck me as odd that I chose to do a subject at school that was not my best, that I was told in year seven that I just did not have a natural flair for or showed any interest in it... I think I should have known then that I perhaps chose history as a degree to be stubborn, to prove people wrong and to show that I could be good at anything I wanted. I was lucky that it worked out in my favour in the end. It doesn't work like that normally. You cannot be good at everything. I am not naturally good at history, but I have come to love history in a way that as propelled me to do well in it. It was not a chore to do the stacks of reading I had to do and the long essays I had to write. Had it not been for the love that formed, I doubt I would have done very well. I was not proving anything to anyone then. I was doing it now because I wanted to.

I have deceived people. I have hurt people. I have lied to myself. I have been a complete cow in summary. I have learnt the hard way. I found the bottom of my soul (and though it may seem cheesy, believe me there is not a speck of cheese in sight there). I have found who I am and who I can be, and now I am just facing up to these facts. Many of them are unfavourable and are, of course, taking time to come to terms with. It took no doctors, no prescription drugs and no therapy to sort me out. It just took me and my will to do it. I may be remarkable, but I doubt it. I think people can do more things than they think they can, if they only harnessed their self-destructive will for a strength that is employed for good. It is harder that way; it is easier by far to take the drugs, have a therapist tell you what you are, what you need etc, but I know what I am and if I ever find myself straying that way again, I know what I can do. I will always be my harshest critic and in this case it works to my favour. I will always over analyse everything I do and say, and then check myself back into order.

Now, I am lethargic at the moment, edging to a destructive state due to a vacancy in my life, but I know I am not as bad as I was and I know what I need to do. I know who I am now. I just need to muster up myself and get going again, pick up the momentum of life and enjoy it! Once the ball starts rolling, it is all plain sailing! After all, life is far too short to be languishing on bad thoughts... so I am expelling these thoughts (rather publicly) that have been mulling on in my mind for a few years, and as far as I am concerned that is a few years too many. So up and onwards... enough of this melancholic lethargy...

I will let you know how it goes :D Cathartic rant thus endeth...