The Nature of the Beast

I feel like a burden. I feel like the very idea of me is a burden to many people. And the idea that I might, in fact, be a burden makes me want to run far far away to a land filled with elephants and surfboards and beaches and no worries. 

In fact I quite often feel like a burden. I burden my parents financially. My mother, emotionally. When I am not calling for help out of my hole of debt, I am calling in tears because I cannot get a handle on my anxiety (which explains why I haven't spoken to my mom in what feels like weeks; I have felt oddly at peace and the weight of my anxiety has lifted--if only temporarily-- I should really call her). I feel like sometimes I have emotions and values that other people don't. People tell me I would get by if I just cared less. And even though I have been spending my days focusing on myself--working, climbing, sleeping, registering for school--and even though I would never sacrifice who I am, I do not agree that it would be best not to care. And that is who I am, I guess. I think caring is important. I think getting close to people, as scary as it is, is important. And sometimes I think that means caring about how they feel and what they think. 

So here I am feeling like a burden to the people around me. To people who know me well, know me a little, people who don't even know me at all. I feel like my mere presence is a burden, a blight upon the earth, an unwelcome blemish. I am a blemish. Every feeling that I have been brave enough to feel has been invalid. Someone has made it invalid. "You shouldn't be sad", "You shouldn't be worried", "Someone has it worse than you, you know", "think about the children in Africa", "well what about so and so, how do they feel?", "stop caring so much", "relax". Geez, sorry. This has happened so frequently, that recently I have taken to invalidating those feelings myself.  My feelings and my thoughts are equal and opposing forces. I have an ache in the pit of my stomach with a brain saying things like "I do not have any logical reason to be upset", "consider the other person's perspective", "don't be sad", and these things antagonize one another until numbness is the only logical response. Until my feelings feel like a burden to everyone around me and I have no choice but to carry their weight on my own. Until my knees buckle and I resolve to feeling nothing.

So my feelings are a burden. And I guess the rest of me is too. Although I can't really figure myself out long enough to tell. As far as I've gathered I'm on the extreme end of whatever it is, though. I am either too loud or too quiet. Too chubby to be a head turner or too skinny to be healthy. I'm either a pushover or a bitch. A suck-up or lazy. I either annoy--incessantly pestering others with unwanted cheer--or I furrow my eyebrows in a look I am sure is uninviting. Somebody somewhere feels burdened by my  enthusiasm or bitchiness or compliance. Heck, somebody somewhere probably feels burdened by my kindness. "How dare she be so nice to me". 

And that's where it gets sticky. I'm not caring, right? I'm numb. And now I'm a mess because the one thing I thought I had going for me...this compassion and empathy and kindness that I have FOUGHT to make a part of me in spite of the cruelty I've faced...well the only thing it gets me is criticism. "You care too much", "you're too nice". In my struggle to become a good person I seem to have missed something.

I guess I should be asking if my needs are being met. But that would require knowing what those needs are.  But to be honest I feel like I am a fairly simple person. I need food and water and shelter. I need time for activities, I need to be outdoors. I need to feel the forest floor on my feet, sand in between my toes, rain on my face. I need a little bit of sympathy sometimes, a lot of sympathy during a certain time of the month. And I need to feel like I am doing somebody, anybody, just a little bit of good. Because I refuse to believe the world would be better off if we didn't care about each other. 

I certainly have a lot of things to work on.