I struggle with self definition in a way that makes me doubt my own intellectual stability, Despite the fact that I am sure of who I want to be, I teeter constantly back and forth between variations of who I think I am, if I am anybody at all. This is the thing that made me apprehensive to outright rejection of religion back in high school when I felt secure enough to openly oppose Christianity and the Christian god but still feigned belief in a "higher power" which without one "has no purpose". The concept of purpose is very human, very steeped in this need to be transcendent and apply meaning where there isn't any...at the end of this life, we don't even know that we have ever lived it at all and that is scary and sad that I must endure the suffering that I have for nothing, in it's essence. I am defining a lot right now about me that may have been discovered previously had I been more honest with myself about my hang ups....& I have some hang ups, it's hard to begin somewhere but to make the point that I want to...I need to start anywhere. I left Bermuda in 2009 after about 5 years of wishing I could just go and just 3 weeks of planning to get the fuck out. I had to leave Amiya to do my first year and I wish I didn't but everybody said it would be worth the furthering my education. I now know something slightly differently but w/e. that's done, the time is gone and complaining wont help me move forward... I often talk about Bermuda like an infectious wound that doesn't heal and it is that for me in some small but significant ways.
Bermuda symbolises my inferiority, my worthlessness, my rejection/humiliation/shame/self hatred my weaknesses which is funny because it is also the place where all the beautiful memories were made and as I grow older I come to terms with the fact that all I feel about Bermuda, is resentment harboured inside of me, that doesn't go away just because I have left, it's just temporarily bandaged over. It is my inability to come to terms with important situations and events that have shaped the person who I have come to be, who I simultaneously love and loathe. I have ever had this unhealthy self ambivalence and that has not changed since leaving, it has only become muffled over the sound of undue praise for my bravery in leaving when it is my cowardice that makes it so hard for me to stay in Bermuda due to circumstances that I share with, no doubt thousands of people in Bermuda...I am one of the weak who have been driven outside of my home because of the actions of people who don't care either way. I am always moved to tears when I return, my old fears though irrational, flood back as the plane approaches the runway and my eyes well up, my whole life flashes through my mind in a matter of milliseconds and in that space, my worthlessness, my disgrace, my stupidity & everything repugnant within me is reinforced.
I want home but I can't tell what that means right now, leaving Bermuda as hastily as I did has made the transition with Amiya very challenging, I have been living out of suitcases for the better part of 3 years & I have felt my loneliest in these days and my most hopeless. Postponing study to deal with the stress of trying to organise a stable environment has made me feel like I am in a limbo, stuck between decisions that I am not mature enough to make. I have a sob story, but I actually hate those, I am more concerned with what actions I can take at present to move towards my goals that seem to grow more distant as I analyse the resources available to me and compare those with what I actually need to move forward. I am a fucking magician. I am constantly pulling tricks out of the air at the last minute but it's fucking exhausting and I am so tired.
Will I ever finish university? Will I ever get a frigging job? Will I ever not live in a constant state of frenzy and fear that I will have to crawl back home to my parents saying "I couldn't do it"... Sometimes, I am not so sure about what the answers are supposed to be.
Like now. I am cracking slowly under the pressures of falling short, trying hard to stick to a plan to keep me grounded until some wonderful miracle saves me from the gap in my planning. I am living in the "right now" which is both absolutely necessary and tremendously difficult under these circumstances. There is nothing that I can do to improve my situation except what I am doing but because I feel so limited in what I can do...well I feel as if I'm not making progress at all. There I go, complaining again.
...next September, I'm starting a degree in a completely different discipline and focus. Amiya starts big (free) school and I know exactly how I am going to manage my time and for the most part, the resources that will be available to me. I have things to be happy and excited and thankful about. I really am grateful for the opportunities available to me but in the lay period, as I encounter things I never thought I would have to with no one to console me and my very real fear of failure, my sense of self trembles...
I ask myself daily "Sharla, what the eff are you doing?" the answer remains the same but sometimes I need more convincing. "you are building a future, silly" I tell myself but it doesn't make all that I have heaped onto my plate any easier to swallow. I have at least become more pragmatic in my approach to reaching my goals, less sessions of freaking out over silly things. I can't freak out around Amiya, my mama used to freak out...I didn't like it but if it made me feel less secure I knew my daddy, free from the propensity to freak out, would be there to fix that. Amiya doesn't have that comfort...so I really can't freak out, she will be faced with uncertainty in the knowledge that she has a father that she can't depend on. I stay mad about that so I won't go on about...him.
Amiya changes my approach to life all the time. She is more important than everything else to me but everything else is important because of how it will inevitably affect her quality of life... This is the drama, my life is a balancing act where the stability of everything is intimately codependent... I suppose that everyone's life is this way. But I am really just learning a lot about myself and the way I handle (or ignore) pressure until there is a state of urgency. I am always in a new space...introspecting where I can, moving where I can and where I can't, I am just learning what it means to make lemonade out of lemons...
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