Tuning into my SELF.

Feeling a bit like Clark Kent, in disguise, hiding my true identity from the world. I actually bought a pair of fake glasses yesterday. They are big and red and completely nerdy and they do not make me look at all attractive, but there is something so wonderful about putting them on. I feel like I become a new person. I am looking at the world through red frames, and it makes me feel like someone else.

This is pathetic, I know.

I keep eating cookies and avoiding cleaning up my place... although it is screaming at me, and I feel like I am going insane avoiding the work at hand any way I can.

I just want to throw out all my stuff, get rid of everything that is weighing me down, including these red glasses... so I can finally see clearly WHO and HOW I really am.

I smell of sweat and fear and desperation.

I'm going either going to pull myself together and make a change or I'm going to pull my hair out with anxiety from the stress and love-hate relationship I have with my job and with my current life.

I keep dancing around it... but I want to leave. I am not happy here.

I am going to do it.

I'm going to make a change.

I am alive, I am young, I can and should do what is in my best interest. I want to live my life, for ME, not for a business so that others can find balance and happiness in their lives.

I am simply not happy focusing my whole life around merge... and closing myself off from the world in every other avenue.

I am lonely.

I am very confused, and what I need to do it tune into that feeling, understand it... and stop running way from it.

I know that I have the strength to face it. But I keep turning to old habits of "sedation" to tune these uncomfortable feelings out. It's ok... to feel this. It's ok to have emotions. It's acting irrationally that may be the wrong thing. Or is it?

What is logical may no longer be what is right for me.

I don't want to feel ashamed or embarrassed about myself anymore. But it hurts in a way, trying to talk to people about my beliefs or feelings when they simply don't understand or look at me like I am completely crazy. I put too much value on the opinion of others.

Maybe that is the lesson I have needed to learn all along. It's not about what "they" think. It's about what I think is best for me, and for MY life, for MY SELF.

Over-whelmed.

I feel stuffed.

With longing, I keep overfilling myself with things I do not need. Physically and mentally, I have been buying or eating things I don't really need in order to try to feel a little bit better about myself, or change the way I feel, change my identity. I do find excitement - moments of pure ecstasy when things work themselves out, or I feel like I have made accomplishments or I take time to look around at the beauty in the world around me.

Other times, I feel overwhelmed and lost in confusion over the longings calling me... to be FREE - to sing, to run, to dive in the waters and plunge into the waves, swimming for as long as I can... without even worrying about coming back to shore.

I feel very conflicted between my very "grounded" place in life, in Buffalo, in my family, in my relationships and yet I somehow remain unattached to them all at the same time. I could just pick up and go if I truly wanted it. I don't know if it would just be a quest for inner answers, or a journey to explore the world beyond myself, but I often feel like I want to get away, to just leave and go off following the "flow" for a while.

The idea seems so grand, to take time - consciously make positive decisions, surround myself with positive people, and make positive change in myself... so that maybe I can bring that back to Buffalo in the end.

I don't know if I would go to cities or country, travel in the states or abroad... It would just feel beautiful to "let go" and follow my heart for a while.

I think I am holding on so tightly to my life here, that I am choking it. Suffocating myself with the idea that things have to be a certain way, or I have to be a certain type of person. I am not certain about anything at all.... except that there is something calling me to be more, to reach higher, to push myself farther, to realize, to see, to look beyond...

Maybe I CAN do that here. I wonder if it's me just taking Buffalo for granted or my past fears haunting me here that makes me want to escape sometimes.

I see ex-boyfriends, ex-friends, ex-lives. Changing so much in such a small space, with so many people seemingly watching my every move, can feel embarrassing. In a way, I am still a little girl who is conflicted between wanting her independence but also feel completely paralyzed and afraid to make change.

Sometimes I feel like I am still waiting for life to begin. I feel like I'm asleep at the wheel... watching the world go by.

I want to wake up.

I want to get out of bed... get out of my comfort zone.

I'm at the point where I feel like moving my apartment again. It's only been 3 months this time. I was averaging about a year in each place for the last 3 years around Buffalo.

I kind of see myself on the brink of either diving in here, buying a house, getting married, having a family, and digging deeper -

Or uprooting, and replanting (or maybe just being a hanging, portable plant for a while, haha). But is the grass just greener on the other side? I would still have to deal with all the healing that I need to do, I would also feel guilty most likely for leaving my "baby" - merge - when she so desperately needs my love. I just don't know if I can give her the love she needs, or maybe I need to give her a better care-taker with more experience...

The amount of options in life can be overwhelming and exhausting. But maybe I'll realize that I'm either already in the right place and I'm able to find everything I need right here, or I'll realize that Buffalo doesn't need me as much as I feel obligated to be here, and I should go travel - while I am young and free and not stuck in my ways or in the routine restaurant life forever.

I know that the answer lies within.... dormant - kind of how I'm feeling lately. I need to shed the layers that have built up in my life again. Pair down to the bare essentials and get back in touch with what is real, what is here, what is NOW.