All right, I’m bad a keeping a blog, I admit it. I’m not very attentive and while I always begin new entries with the best of intentions, somehow they never make it on here. I’m not sure why, it’s just sometimes they don’t pan out.

I’m a silly nonsensical girl, and I know it. I’m not the prettiest, the most creative, the wittiest or even very clever, and I know that too. Sometimes it’s hard coming to terms with your own mediocrity – but necessary. I’m 23 and I haven’t completed much in life. This is my sixth year of college, because I take too many classes that I don’t need and am just interested in learning things instead. I have enough credits to have a minor in any of the following: Anthropology, Classics, History, German or Film. But I’m just barely close to getting those stupid requirements out of the way. I ended up not getting my financial aid filled out in time, so I still owe a semester’s worth of tuition and couldn’t take classes this past winter. I know, I’m really good at getting things done. I still live at home with my mom, which is kind of grating on me lately considering my younger brother has already moved out and I feel like I’m going nowhere in life. I’ve just recently gotten a job that while I appreciate being there, I could never make a career out of. I’m going to school for languages, but all I really want to do is open a bakery/book shop/cafe with Mary and Kristina.

Sure, sometimes I’m fun. I watch a lot of movies, I read as many books as I can in whatever spare time I have and I really like to cook and bake tasty treats, but I’m not good at anything. Well, I’m good at remembering birthdays, even if I’m silently bitter when people don’t remember mine. Watching movies and reading books isn’t really that difficult or special, a lot of people do it all the time. Cooking isn’t really that hard either. You follow a recipe (or don’t, therefore creating your own), neither of which are challenging. I like to crochet, but that’s not hard either if you have the patience and interest to continue doing it. I like VHS tapes and collecting blue grass and folk records. I like wearing two pairs of socks at the same time and pretending I have a different accent every day. I enjoy making jam and writing longhand. I like to write research papers for school and alphabetize my book shelves, conjugate English verbs into Russian and then into German, if I can remember them all. I have a lot of stuff crammed into my bedroom, and never enough space for storage. My mom complains about that all the time. She just doesn’t get the idea of collecting. I’m pretty particular about things in general, but I’m not high-maintenance. I fancy myself agreeable and easy going. My mom says I correct her too much, but it’s never out of spite or just so I can be right; I just want to spread what I know and acquire what I don’t from others. I do laundry and sing in the shower. I like to learn whatever I can and try to pass it on to everyone. I like to play Tetris, probably the only thing I’m actually genuinely okay at, but above all I like to do things for other people.

Sometimes (most of the time, actually) I feel like I care too much and get hurt too easily, but it makes no difference to anyone but me. I dwell too much on what I could have/should have/would have done about things in my past than how to improve upon them in the future. You know that scene in the beginning of that movie The Holiday with Kate Winslet? Where she’s walking around her quaint English cottage home on a cold winter night, wearing a bulky sweater, making a cup of tea and sobbing in her kitchen? That’s me, except the scene never comes to the point of resolution. For the past two years that scene’s been on repeat and I’m beginning to doubt whether I’m ever going to move on to the next act. It’s not for lack of trying, mind you.

I cry a lot, much more than people who know me might think. I could be watching a commercial on TV about sports drinks and it will remind me of someone or something that will set me off crying for a good twenty minutes. I think I might have to just laugh the next time the pizza guy catches me crying again. Maybe it’s pathetic, but it’s the only therapy I know. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions; I think if you want to do something, you either do it or you don’t, but this year, as bitter as it may sound, I’ve resolved not to care as much. About things in general. Not to worry or be anxious when I don’t hear from my friends or when I find out all the fun things that have happened without me. Not to fall in love with every boy that talks to me or gives me the time of day. (Also, not to fall in love so quickly with the ones that seem worth it; they inevitably let you down, too.) It’s hard knowing when to give up on someone – or the idea of being with someone – and when not to.

I guess the hardest part for me is coming to terms with how lonely I am. I have great friends that I see often enough, but I have more friends that I feel like forget I exist until the next time they actually see me than friends that remember who I am. I have a lot of anxiety problems that I don’t talk about to anyone, because it’s easier for me to stress about something on my own than figure out how to talk to someone about them, some of which don’t even make sense when I try to verbalize them. Surely I’m not the only one who feels this way, I know.

But you know what? It’s okay to be unsure. It’s okay to feel lonely, because I know I won’t always feel like that and it makes me appreciate more the times when I’m not-so-lonely. It’s okay to have things about yourself that you want to work on or make better, but it’s hard not to overdo it sometimes.

I’m not sure how to wrap this up, really. I’m trying to end it on a light note, but I don’t think it’s come across exactly how I’d like it to. Don’t think this is a ‘woe is me’ type post; it’s just me trying to figure things out on paper (on digital ‘paper’?) Please don't misunderstand any of this as conceit or a search for sympathy; I promise you it is neither. (Other than Mary and Kristina, I'm not even sure that anyone reads this, in which case, I suppose I'm worry-free!)

Anyway, I hope your night’s as cozy as mine is about to be. All wrapped up in blankets reading a lengthy, but interesting, biography about Lucrezia Borgia. Swoon!

Love,
Cristina

Labels: life