I have not written in this blog in quite some time and it had been severely underused since I created it. As such, I have decided to recreate it and make it my new full time blog! I really loved writing in my Diary of a Fat Teenager for the three years that I wrote in it (although I could argue the validity of the last year and half) but I think I have to let it go. One of the biggest reasons for this is that I am not a teenager anymore. I look back at what I wrote as a 17 year old and either laugh at how horrible my writing was, or wonder at how strong I seemed at times. I sometimes feel 20 year old me is nowhere near as fierce as I was a few years back. But anyway, even if I do still have a lot more growing up to do, I have changed a lot, and I want to have a fresh start with this blog.
My life has changed a lot since last semester. I started dating a boy about a month before summer break, which last until I returned to school. I feel like I changed -and learned- a lot from that relationship, but things just didn’t work out for me and I ended it. Initially things started out great, but they just went downhill from there. I found out things that I really shouldn’t have had to deal with for a 1 month old relationship and there were things he did that bothered me. I guess after I while I felt like I stayed with him because of my insecurities rather than because I really liked him. I’m sure I could blather on about it more, but I don’t think many would want to hear. Maybe a story for another time.
In any case, I learned from it that I can’t be afraid to speak up for myself, that I shouldn’t rush into things, and that I should trust myself more. Right now I’m trying to make myself comfortable with being alone. It’s hard, and I always tend to slip right back into feeling as though I need a boyfriend to feel beautiful/sexy/anything complimentary. I know I shouldn’t think that way, but it always seems to happen. I did go on a date a few weeks ago and really liked the guy, but after going out on two dates he told me he didn’t want to deal with the distance since he lived rather far away. Which made me bummed because I really liked the guy. But I guess it still helps to make me feel more ‘normal’ with the dating world- I really feel lost when it comes to that.
Which leads me to the other great change in the past year (really, most of these changes have occurred in the past two months of my life)- I officially withdrew from Nursing yesterday. This semester started out okay- I had been feeling very anxious about everything but I just attributed that to the fact that it was the beginning of the semester. I made it through orientation and my first week of classes. First real day of clinical I was very anxious. And again, I attributed it to being the first day, etc.
The next week clinical rolled around and I had an anxiety attack before having to talk to a patient. I started feeling light headed and pretty much spent ten minutes uncontrollably crying in front of my instructor. Which was horrifying. My instructor was amazing though and helped me through it. I talked to her afterwords and she recommended that if i didn’t feel better to go Health Services on campus. At the end of the weekend I was still feeling extremely anxious just thinking about the next week, so I made myself head over to Health Services and set up an appointment with the therapist there. Spent the week still feeling a lot of anxiety, until I woke up one morning and wanted to do nothing other than sleep. I don’t know how the hell I made myself go to class, but I did. I really would’ve rather been anywhere else but in my two classes that day. At the end of my second class while talking to my friends I broke down crying again, and my Mental Health professor saw me and took me into her office to talk.
Really, all of the people I talked to throughout all this are amazing people. Even if they don’t know it, they really helped me. I basically continued crying (I swear, I cried more in that one week than my entire life) and telling her everything. She told me that I wasn’t crazy, etc. that I should get help. When I told her that I didn’t know if Nursing was what I really wanted to do, she told me I had a choice. She helped me decide to take a break this semester to figure things out. For the longest time I felt like I was trapped on a path in a nice little box, and when she told me I didn’t have to be it was such a freeing feeling, silly as that may sound. I just had so many worries and thoughts going through my mind up until that point I couldn’t handle it.
So I took that choice and withdrew from my nursing classes. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I feel like a lot of my anxiety stemmed from the fact that I knew deep down I didn’t want to do what I was doing. Some people there really had the drive and they really wanted it- I just wasn’t one of those people at all. I didn’t want it that badly. I thought I would like it and I thought I would’ve been good at it- but I didn’t like it. I thought my family was proud of me for going that path and that they would be ashamed of me if I went with something else. I thought I would end up with nothing because I wouldn’t be able to find a job with a different degree. I felt vulnerable with my nice boxed path crumbled up and thrown out the window with nothing to replace it.
But here I am now! I’m still talking with the school therapist once a week, which I think has really helped me, even if in small ways. I am working right now to help with my fears regarding talking on the telephone- and I feel like I have gotten better. I spent the past few weeks thinking about what I wanted to do, and one day it just clicked. I had thought about switching to a Psychology major, because I loved my Psych classes and with that major I could still graduate on time, but I wasn’t sure about it. Then I realized that my best friend is an Art Therapy major, pretty much a combination of Art and Psychology. The more I thought on it the more right it felt, and I submitted the form to declare it as my major officially. While this brings along with it feelings of guilt for feeling selfish for changing (not to mention the guilt over money- I hate how everything comes back that), and fear of things turning out bad and not being able to find a job with this degree, I just feel lighter about everything.
I feel like even if I can’t get a job related right away or if I go to get a Masters, at least it is for something I can be passionate about and be excited to learn about. I can relate to Art Therapy, as I feel like through art I really learned to love myself more, and it would be amazing to help others do the same. Art therapy ties together my love of art and can relate to body image, self esteem issues, feminism, etc. and that is something I love about it. I guess even if I end up having to work at a crap job unrelated to my degree, at least I will have learned what I love and had two good years of it.
So it will be interesting and exciting to see how my life goes- this is such a big change.
But I am starting to feel more comfortable with myself- I feel like I am more of my old self again, and it feels good.
And got a new haircut!
… I focused on the word ‘Compression’ and went with the idea of women being compressed by corsets and how we are supposed to fit into this very narrow definition of ‘female’. Originally this was just going to be for my Illustration project, but then my Papermaking professor told me I should work with the same concept. So I ended up attempting to make a corset out of paper… Which is a lot harder than it sounds! I spent a lot of time on the damn thing, and it just didn’t come out the way I had thought it would… And for Illustration I didn’t really do what the professor was looking for (although he said most of us didn’t)… I guess I was just disappointed in myself that neither of my final projects were as good as my earlier ones. Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to take a picture of it, but once I go back next semester and get a chance I will take one.
