To go or not to go...

...That is my question.

Though things have been going okay lately, meaning no crying fits of hysteria down the street, i have contemplated going to...THERAPY.

A couple of weeks ago as i was getting another Peanut Butter cookie(the things are just too damn good), i happened upon the Health Center, whose inviting and looming structure called to me. Mid chew i thought about the prospect of going to therapy, i mean it can't hurt to talk about your "problems" with a willing participant at the other end.

But because i am a complete scardy cat, i have yet to make up my mind. I called the place(big wuss i know) and skirted around the prospect of therapy with the lady on the phone who assured me that i could talk about whatever i wanted to talk about

Me: Even anxiety related problems
Lady: If that is what you want to talk about...you can make an appointment over the phone
Me: i haven't decided to go or not, i just wanted to know that if i did want to go... i can...you know...go to therapy.

I have been making up all these excuses in my head why i shouldn't go "I'd have to pay"(first 12 sessions are free), "I don't have the time" (free on WF after 1:30) "I don't need to go everything is alright" (liar). By tuesday i will have made up my decision. Before i venture onto bigger and larger things i like to hope i wouldn't have this looming problem in the background. I'd like to know that i can make it on my own, open up, invite people in, and generally feel okay.

We'll see what happens.

I still find it very difficult to let people in, to let my guard down. Sometimes i feel like i am the guard and the queen of my very own fortress. And internally they are fighting for supremacy. I am fighting to keep the things i hold dear(and fear) kept locked inside. But i am beginnig to want to throw down my hair and let those i want to climb up and see whats inside. It can get lonely holding down the fort all day and night.

I have the most anxiety everyone. I fear girls won't like me, and boys won't take interest in me. Which could all be very illogical but are what i believe. So i keep them all at bay, even when i desperately need for them to be close.

Speaking of close, Short boy at my job HUGGED me the other day. EWWW. Though my job is very tedious, shelving books, i make the most of my 4 hours working by listening to my iPod and dancing when no one is around. I like the dancing part the best, i've developed mad skills.

Occassionally i will help a person find a book, or eat skittles behind a shelf so no one can see me. The usual. The people i work with are okay. One girl is a total Bi-atch who sits at a desk all day looking at her facebook account, though she makes about 2 dollars more than everyone else.

And then there is the short dude. He gets the nickname because he is short, almost as short as me, which i have explained is a no-no. He is nice though, and for the most part an OK person to talk too, though he has a huge obsession with Flavor of Love and must talk about it every monday.

I have an uncanny ability to notice when someone is staring at me. I am so aware of the people around me, i can never be taken off guard. So occassionaly as i saunter into the office, i will glance back to see him staring. And staring very hard. He comments on how i look all the time and makes an effort to work near me while shelving books, which is very uncomfortable when two people are trying to shelve a book in the same suffocating and tight row.

He hasn't crossed the line of creepy yet, though his hug the other day made me almost run for the hills. He, being short, commented on how very cute my height was and that it made me so...CUTE. He then proceeded to hug me across the shoulders, as i prayed for dear life that my hand didn't accidently smack him. It lasted all about 10 seconds but by then i knew..."another guy i don't want to have a crush on me" . Great.

I think there is a reason i attract these creepy boys, and if i attend therapy maybe he/she can explain why. Cause i can't.

Maybe less dancing in library will help. I was literally dancing and this dude was staring at me, so i abruptly stopped while he continued to molest me with his eyes. I could only think "this show is not for free" and walked away with my head down low.

Halloween is coming up. What will i be this year? I have to attend stupid halloween party at job and have yet to decided what i will be.

Time to do Chemistry homework, girls gotta pass this class.

28 Days Later....

....I have been waiting to use that title for too long.

So how are things?

I'm doing good.

A little leaner. Still terrible at math. No longer crushing on a certain you know who from the you know what club.

....I'm so happy to be back. More than I can express in words. I'd first like to apologize for leaving so abruptly without explaining. If you couldn't tell by my last entries I was not in the best of spirits. Maybe it was the beginning of the semester. Maybe my anxiety was at higher level than I liked to admit, perhaps it was my increasing self doubt and spell of bad days, but I simply felt...LOST.

So I decided to take a 28 hiatus, not particularly from this blog, but from my routine. There are just those moments in life, when you wish you could be someone else. You have this idea that if you could change the things about yourself that you hate, all will be great with in your life. I was simply sick of being the sad girl, I am simply sick of being the girl with increasing self doubt, with bouts of insecurity, or teary days and grey skies.

So I decided to give myself 28 days(based on my favorite movie) to see what I could accomplish, to figure out the small things, to stop feeling so bad about who I am. To stop feeling like I'm too inadequate to have friends, or a boyfriend, or a piece of mind. And in 28 days I hoped to have some greater sense of myself, I hoped that I would have "it" figured out. "It" being if going on like I had been going would be the course of my life. If I would forever give in to being the sad girl...

BUT

...In about 3 days I figured that I liked who I was, have to work on my anxiety problems, and that life is full of ups and downs but that it's worth living regardless of the shitty moments....

I know you were probably expecting something more dramatic:

That I literally ran away for 28 days and found out the secrets of my life 500 miles away in a new town/city.

Maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew and totally had a nervous breakdown, my own little Girl Interrupted episode.

Maybe I had met a boy and was spending all of my time with him curled up in blankets and kisses.

The last one would have been nice.

Unfortunately, but with much more simplicity, I simply took time to get to know myself. Away from everything.

During the beginning of my 28 days later scenario I discovered, not really discovered but embraced, that I have anxiety problems. My psych teacher calls them anxiety disorders, but I hate that word, I'd rather have anxiety problems than anxiety disorder. When it developed, that could take a while to pinpoint, but I do know that for the last several years it has been ruling my life. It has been the cloud over my head, the rock I hide under, the figure that holds me back. It is something I wish not to live with anymore, or something I hope I can learn to cope with. But I don't want to be it's victim, I don't need it to hold my hand and lead my down a path I cannot find my way back from.

The last 28 days I have:

Watch an endless amount of "Are you Afraid of the Dark"

Danced in the library

Eaten way to many Peanut Butter Cookies

Went to several club meetings

Ditched Amnesty International.

Been stalked by weird dude who works in bookstore/eating area/movie theater building on campus

Worked out a total of three times(bad I know).

Talked to someone in my class.

I think I flirted.

Made up a nickname for all of my co-workers

Slept in class

Kicked my lab partner in the leg

Dumped Gavin Degraw for Sufjan Stevens.

Made up a dance for the following items and occasions: Cheez-its. Doritos. Peanut Butter Cookie. Passing Bio Test. Pending concerts. and occasional nothing dances. All simply involve small rump shaking and cabbage patch arm movements.

Slept through a fire alarm.

These 28 days have been liberating in a sense that I have allowed myself to be okay with who I am. So I still don't have any friends, and I don't even have a crush worthy guy to drool over anymore(unless you are counting Sufjan Stevens who I will be talking about in the next entry. FREAKY dream stuff, I feel like a dirty whore.), but I am learning to accept myself. I am learning to love the things that I have, because I know I have so much to give, that there is an endless amount of possibilities that I possess, which all lay before me.

So:

My hair may never fall in the right place

I will never manage to pull off wearing a skirt without looking uncomfortable

I will always have one foot firmly planted in my dreams

I may always be a little shy-

-and insecure-

-and perhaps a little sad-

I may always find small comfort in being a homebody...

Who fancies eating cereal in bed while watching old school nick

My musical taste may be a tad bit sad and folkish, but never EMO.

I will always have bad posture

and love wearing jeans and a T

BUT:

I am content with all of that. And am learning that my self worth is dependent on how I view myself and not how others view or treat me. I have learned that I am who I am. And that no matter how many tears I shed over the complexity that is living, no matter how slighted I feel about my circumstance, I have every single day of my life to improve on it. To work with it, to learn to cope. To laugh, to cry, to feel, to be, to live. And that makes the shitty stuff easier to deal with.

I refuse to be that girl anymore while maintaining the things that make me...ME. And it will take a lot of work to get to a place where I am truly happy. And not the sad, lonely, bitter...I could go on but for the sake of everything I won't .

28 days later, and I feel like I am on a journey. Not to a new destination. But back home to me. I don't expect it to be easy, I am counting on more tears, to feel insignificant and small somedays. But there is a slight difference, I am learning how to deal with it. I am learning to not let it consume me, I am sick of it consuming me. I am sick of it being my rock, which I lean securely on.

28 days later, and I feel a little free.

Once again sorry about the 28 days hiatus, I should have told you before hand but I didn't know till after I wrote the post that I would go on the hiatus and I couldn't write a new post because that would totally go against it(not counting the post-scripts I just didn't want anyone to think I died).

I hope I have not made anyone too mad, you guys are a huge part of the girl I am learning to accept( I can't say woman yet, that's too adulty), and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart

Back to regular postings, I swear. There will not be anymore long periods of no posting, it sucked not writing down things about work(creepy short dude and Sir-smells-a-lot), school(Mike,math,Katherine) and generally reading your blogs. The last part I missed the most. I am ready to fall back into where I fit snuggly in. And I also am looking forward to ranting and raving, but you know..

So how have you been?

I have some catching up to do, it may take me a while(probably tonight).

Today I received my first paycheck from new job and I now have to splurge on 2 Sufi(my husband pictured above, isn't he...LOVELY) CD's, a poster and a T-shirt.

What is a girl to do with all this part-time job money she is rolling in.

Until tomorrow.

Beckett A. Hughes.

Get Me Gone

I need a vacation. Not a summer vacation where I lounge around and get use to doing nothing except watch TV and munch on cereal.

I simply need a break away from my life, from everything right now.

My head/emotions/moods have been running at an all time high lately, which means I feel like I am in a rut. No particular rut, just a whole mess of one, which I have yet to get myself out of. Even the small triumphs(chit chat with a very hot French man while I was buying a poster. He was uber nice and is sure to become the object of my dreams for the next few weeks) of my week have been crushed by the setbacks of my increasing self doubt.

It's almost suffocating how bad I feel somedays. I think Dido said it best " I'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself anymore" . They come quickly(sadness) and for no unseen reason, but I know there must be a trigger to the depression somewhere, and then I just want to disappear. Like that crazy Buffy episode where the girl was ignored in school so much that she actually became invisible. One of my early Buffy favs.

Running away is a very familiar theme in my life. I may or may not have mentioned that I use to run away when I was younger. My cousin and brother would be in the house, and the moment they did something to upset I would pack my Beauty and the Beast sleeping bag(which I still have) throw food, toys and a book into it, and protest that I was going away forever. Forever of course was 5 minutes, after standing in the abandoned lot around the corner realizing no one was coming for me.

I felt completely invisible wherever I roamed, being bumped into, being unrecognized on the street by peers...What a dreadful feeling that is.But even more dreaduful that i need those things to feel okay. It's that little voice in the back of my head that wonders if I were to disappear would anyone even care. And I realized the answer to that is No. A big invisible no. I have never felt so lonely in my whole entire life.

I need a vacation, a long extended one that differs greatly from the life I lead now. I need to get away and figure out where I am heading. Weird...I feel like I need to get lost to be found. At this point I don't care what path I stumble on or where it leads, as long as when(if) I return I will have a greater sense of myself. Of my significance. Sometimes you just need to be reminded of it.

Who knows.

I've been meaning to put this list up for a while, but procrastination caught up with me in more ways than one.

Life Simple Pleasures

1. Watching my cats sleep at the foot of my bed and crawling beside them to rest my head near them.
2. Experiencing deja vu.
3. Pineapple Italian ices! The ones in the small cup where you eat it with the wooden scoop that comes when you buy it . Priceless.
4. Blackouts(due to storms), the house lit up with candles, my mom and I curled up on the couch reading a book(preferably rain line), listening to old CD's.
5. Listening to an old song and remembering the sentiment behind it after all those years.
6. The moments when life literally seems to good to be true. Where you take a step back and look fondly on the moment, knowing that they are infrequent, but cherishing that you at least got to experience it.
7. Walking in a new pair of converse , and breaking them in, so in a few months time they will have that old scratched up look to them.
8. Finding something new in something old. Like that house you have never seen before though you have driven down that street a million times. Or that new favorite song on the CD that hasn't been played for a while.
9. Finding that thing that makes you laugh and then having to repeat it over and over again, or in my case making someone(usually my brother, he does amazing impersonations) repeat it over and over again.
10.Being old enough to be nostalgic but young enough to be surprised by new things.

~Beckett Amelia Hughes~

*Postscript*: Not dead i swear just trying to fall back into place. Will be back to regular postings soon.

*Post-Postscript(is that how it goes)*- Will be back FRIDAY. I'm so excited, i've missed writing on this thing more than anyone will ever know. These 4 weeks have been the longest week of my life and i have so much to say. I've missed you all. See you on Friday. For real.