Thoughts

So I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately, and just trying to piece together who I am. I know the basics; I’m a twenty year old undergraduate female student from the south-west of England. But after that, I get lost. I have a disability, but I wouldn’t necessarily class myself as disabled. I have great friends, but yet I still class myself as lonely. I’m not sad to be lonely – at least I don’t think so. I seem to be quite happy just plodding along with my life full of nothingness. I’ve just completed my first year of university and should feel so much more independent and have such a wide group of new friends. Truth is, I don’t though. I had one of the hardest years of my life and I’ve come out of it with nothing other than good grades and experience. Is that nothing though? The wisdom I have learnt from this year has surely helped me become “me” – whoever that is.

I saw a poem floating around Facebook recently about how without technology who would you actually have in your life. That struck a chord with me. I’ve come to realise that without my phone and the connection to the internet I wouldn’t have anyone. I can’t remember the last time I saw one of my friends in person. Sure, we talk all the time on the phone but without that instant messaging what would we have? I hope that it would still be the same, but I am certainly not naïve.

There are so many social expectations that I feel like I should have lived up to by now: I should have a job, be able to drive, see my friends every weekend. I don’t have or do any of these things and recently it’s left me feeling more and more like a failure. I see friends of friends on Facebook announcing their social calendar and watch as the pictures follow the posts shortly after. Whilst I sit there in my pyjama’s watching back-to-back episodes of gossip girl.

It’s like there are two people within me. There’s the one who wants to do all these things, has all these goals, ambitions and courage by the bucket load. Then there’s the other one; afraid to step out of her comfort zone for fear of being judged. It’s like my heart is telling me to do all these things, yet my head had put a barricade around the thought of anything new – anything remotely scary.

You see, I’m a thinker and not a doer. I have wild ambitions, okay maybe not that wild, but I’m scared of failing and so I don’t even allow myself to try. That’s not the way that it should be. I shouldn’t be scared of failing, failing is okay. I get anxious about things I shouldn’t even care about: making a phonecall, applying for a job, doing something new and out of my comfort zone.

If this was me a few months ago then I would lie to myself and say this would be the part saying that I’m going to change and that I’m going to start making proactive choices. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be able to say that. But the truth is that I don’t really know how to. I’ve been this way for so long that I’m unsure as to how I could even start. I want to be different. I want to have stories that I can tell my children, and grandchildren. I want to be remembered. I want to inspire myself. I want to be the girl that actually does something that scares her, just to prove that she can. I hope I get there, I hope I can be that girl that I’ve always wanted to be.