being me

lately all i want to do is read heather busse's blog and wish i wrote the things she did. i suppose lately, all i want is to be other people. feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. the way i look, the job i have, the activities i participate in, the activities i don't. what i've accomplished, or more importantly, what i haven't. and i don't want to be this person. who's obsessed with success, who feels inferior because of the money i make, who feels she doesn't deserve good things. the girl who has voices in her head telling her she's ugly and pitiful and stupid and not good enough. the girl who doesn't let herself have fun or have dreams because she feels she doesn't deserve it and i wonder how i got this way. this is not how i was raised, but maybe its how i've been influenced in my beginning adult years. i sense that as children we are told to have big dreams, the world is at our fingertips. and somewhere between 20 years old and 24, all previous inspirational words become moot. following your dreams and paying off your school loans are no longer synonymous in this world. it's all overwhelming and in the process i think i've forgotten how to be me.

i read books. which i believe is truly my only real self-indulgent thing that is for me and only me.

otherwise, i'm at a friend's house trying to drink too much wine so that i'm fun. or i'm using all my free time applying for some new and "better" job but only by the definition that it makes more money. or i'm picking myself apart, i'm tanning or fixing my hair so that i look like the indie dream girls of los angeles, and less like me. even when it comes to the things i'm looking forward to in the near future, the main reason i'm excited about it has to do with the fact that my boyfriend is a part of it. which isn't bad, but none of it is for me. and me only. i think i'm so far gone from myself i don't even know where to look anymore.

when i took that photo, i was alone. and it was only for me.

i was brave once.