The last couple of weeks have been punctuated by both soaring highs and crashing lows. I've had moments of pure, unbridled bliss and I've also had a couple of the most severe and terrifying panic attacks of my life. I've started a dozen post drafts but not managed to hit publish on any because my mind is a jumble of thoughts and feelings that work against one another and leave me with the fallout- a strange feeling of loss, or perhaps the very opposite? I'm not quite sure. I feel like I'm floating around in a whirl of confusion but I'm also finding myself with a much clearer direction and desire to achieve.

There is actually a lot of wonderful little things happening in my world that I've wanted to share, but in between those times my anxiety has been high and I've found myself prefering to fill silence with the voices of others rather than my own. Tom got a new job for the summer and has had a couple of interviews for really exciting graduate positions. It's too soon still to know what he'll do and where we might be next year, but I'm just so damn proud of him and have learnt so much from watching him work towards his dreams throughout honours and this painful job-seeking process. I find myself more driven simply by knowing I have him by my side and reminding myself of the drive he shows even, no, especially, when things feel like too much.  

I've been working on a few little creative projects (pressing flowers, making succulent houses) and planning DIY gifts and decorations for Christmas. We put up our 'tree' (excuse the poor iPhone photo) for this year and downloaded hilarious carols albums from the liked of Boys II Men and Mariah Carey. I tested a recipe for Christmas cookies and brought the final product into work for my regulars to judge. My day to day has been full of little joys such as these; my feelings of overwhelm have sprung from within my own head, not in response to external stressors. 

Most importantly, though, I've finally started on the path towards a dream of mine and can see both hard work and great reward in my future. My dad has been helping from afar and he has helped me to gain much more confidence in my ability to reach my own goals.

So why am I writing today? I don't know. Nothing has changed, I'm still feeling that paradoxical pang of bliss and overwhelming fear. It's about to reach 37 degrees , I'm standing in a lonely shop with no customers and I have a mountain of dishes to attack when I get home. But today, for some strange reason, these little monotonies of daily life are what makes me feel human and whole. I haven't served a customer in half an hour and yet I'm feeling more connected to the rest of the world and less like the stranger in a crowd.

ps. It hit 39 degrees this afternoon, which for those of you playing at home on the other side of the globe is 102 Fahrenheit. I have no words to explain the hate I feel for the sun right now. 

unravelling

I have spent my time since school calling myself a student, keeping menial entry-level jobs to 'support myself through Uni'.  enrolling every other semester in subjects of which I would inevitably drop out. Whilst other people not attending University were seeking office jobs, I continued to strive for a life I wasn't ready to lead. Study requires a level of self-determination and discipline I was not willing to give, I just didn't realise this at the time.

The last five years haven't been entirely wasted, but this is one hurdle that has haunted me throughout. I am content with where I am, and yet I crave for that life I had expected to have by this time, for the milestones I had expected to have reached. I had assumed that by this time I'd be donning the cap and gown, not attending orientation week alongside others the age of my baby sister. It is hard at these times not to feel a pang of regret. These years have seen me both the incapacitated victim and the heroic conquerer of my own anxiety. These are my stories, these are my achievements. They are just so very different to the achievements I thought I'd have. I had hurdles that I could never have expected and would never have wished upon myself. I failed to achieve all that I planned, and I've succeeded in areas I hadn't prepared for. Life is like that. Life is unpredictable.

I often find that I think of myself in the past as another person entirely. We may share many of the same memories, but our lives and our motivations are different. The past is another country and she who inhabits it lacks the wisdom that I have garnered by the benefit of her experiences there. I know her well, but she can only dream of me. The future Georgia I will never meet knows me better than she knows herself. The three of us are sisters, estranged by time but intrinsically linked through memories and blood and the words we leave behind as a trail of evidence.

There are times where I become angry with my younger self. Frustrated that her selfish, hedonistic lifestyle did not bestow upon me the life I had expected for this time of my life. I think about those semesters of University that went by marked only with a new set of Withdraw Fails on the academic transcript we share. I lament how her actions then have to affect me so greatly now; she feels like an estranged little sister and yet her actions directly influence the very composition of my days. Her decisions were made with priorities that are not always aligned with my own.

It is harrowing and humbling that one must learn to make decisions for two versions of oneself. I choose to start University next year because I do not wish to feel this anguish at my (now present, then past) self in the future. It feels as though I've had to learn some hard truths that I had always thought were innate. The division between the present and the future are not so distinct. The Georgia of the future is vulnerable to the present, so I must protect her with the decisions that I make. She is older and wiser than me, but her wisdom is defined by my experiences.

I've got the message already!

As if I haven't already been given enough wake-up calls urging me to start pushing myself harder, I have been sent yet another great kick in the pants to get a move on. In an interview for a second entry-level hospitality position, I was told that an employer pays a seventeen-year-old something like 35% less to do the same work as a twenty-two-year-old like myself. How can I compete? And why am I still in a position where I need to?

It dawned on me for the seven hundredth time that this is not how or where I saw myself five years out of high school.

I have spent my time since school calling myself a student, keeping menial entry-level jobs to 'support myself through Uni'.  enrolling every other semester in subjects of which I would invariably drop out.

Now this is not to say that I am not happy with where I am. I love my life, but things might be a whole lot easier if I were finishing my first undergraduate degree at twenty-two, not starting it.

There are times where I am really frustrated with selfish hedonist that was younger me. I lament how her actions have to affect me now; she feels like an estranged little sister and yet her actions directly influence the composition of my days. My reality. Her decisions were made with priorities that are not always aligned with my own.

a confession

The story I posted recently with the title Secrets and Solitude has somehow deterred me from posting anything much since. I retreated from this place because I had shared more than I'd anticipated. In sharing my past I was sharing my soul. That girl feels so foreign to me in so many ways, and yet she and I are still so very much the same. 

My life in no way resembles her days of loneliness and fear and insecurity, but I still struggle with the same demons. She and I will never truly be separate. She is my past and I am her future and we share the same mind and the same heart and the same memories. 

I still feel sad for her and all of her loneliness and the big black Unknown that she faced. There was so much more to her loneliness than the simple fact of her ostracism from a group of false friends. I remember that feeling. I still know it sometimes. I still feel alone in the absurd ticking of my mind. 

I wanted to write this simply to break the ice again, so to speak. I miss this space and I miss blogging freely about what matters to me, be it superficial or otherwise. We will speak very soon. 

words and getting older

I feel like I've lost my way in regards to this blog. What was it that I hoped to achieve from this space? I've almost forgotten.

A small part of me always grieves for that girl. So young, she could never know how truly young she was. And though that time of crippling loneliness passed in what now feels like a blink of an eye, those months will feel like an eternity to her. How I wish to sit with her in that beautiful sanctuary that felt so many miles from the ugliness of the world. I would tell her tales of a wonderful life since her demise. But she is gone. Time has stolen her away from me and I will never be able to tell her how truly magnificent she really was.

I haven't been blogging much lately, things have been just slightly askew. I could not figure out what was missing, but something was off. It turned out to be more than just a little something. Purple and green are the colours of the aliens I used to draw as a child. How strange it is that as an adult I must take pills of those colours every day. This past week has shown me that my need for them has not waned. Not yet. I must be more diligent. I must be more responsible with my most precious of organs. I had forgotten that sadness. How did it not occur to me that my constant headaches might be a cry for help, for those synthetic hormones that keep me balanced. It can be hard to find joy when all you feel is pain. I cried to Tom today "it hurts so much" and he thought I referred to my head, but it is life that causes the most pain.