I have a lot to say... one of the reasons why I started this blog was for that very reason. Actually let me rephrase - I have a lot to think. Because of course as with most of us we don't say everything we think. And there's a lot of reasons why you might decide not to say something you're thinking. Maybe you don't want to upset someone, maybe you're not sure how to say it or maybe you're speaking to someone who only speaks spanish and you only speak English - learn another language!
Let me get one thing straight, this IS an attention seeking post, well I guess all blog posts are when you think about it, but this one more so - hence the click-baity title. But at the risk of going on a complete tangent, the opening paragraph was relevant to this post because I think it's time for me to say somethings I've been thinking - and by "say" I mean write obviously. Unless you want to call me and I'll tell you down the phone.
It's been a weird 6 months, and I say 6 months because that is the amount of time since my last blog post where I spoke about bloody Love Island can you believe(?) It's been weird because I've had some great highs but also a bunch of lows - more than I have ever experienced in that space of time I think. I think a lot of it comes with age. Your late twenties are a time where you do some mad reflection. You look back on how you should've done things differently to be a bit "further" in your life. You look at people currently around you who are all in various stages of their lives, you look to the future of the impending doom of turning 30 (newsflash: 30 isn't the end). It gets depressing. And that's not a self diagnosis but it is a realisation that I can admit ultimately I am unhappy.
This is going to sound mad, but I don't necessarily mean that in a bad way. Maybe "unsatisfied" is a better word for it, although one can lead to the other. A lot of my unhappiness ,and I think similar for most of us, comes from me. A lot of what I feel makes me unhappy is actually well within my control so then the question comes down to Why am I not quitting the behaviours that I know are making me unhappy?
Do you ever come across someone on social media who is just living their life but somehow it makes you feel some kind of way. You may not even know who this person is but just seeing their content makes you question things about yourself. But you don't unfollow them, you don't block them, you carry on consuming their content and somehow a post about how they love their dog makes you feel like crap. It's true what they say, social media is like a drug. You don't always realise it but you become addicted, it effects your mood. It's not just a place where you share a photo here and a video there.
Not to say that I'm addicted (or maybe I am) or that the source of all my unhappiness is down to social media. Because in fact, unhappiness through things that are out of your control is perhaps even more damaging. Mental health this, mental health that, "just talk to someone", oops someone else has killed themselves, the same conversations happen and life goes on for the rest of us. Is our mental health in or out of our control? - I guess a bit of both but whether we are dealing with things internally or externally they will all take their toll eventually.
Something you'll come to realise as you get older (or maybe something you've already realised) is having friends and maintaining relationships (whether romantic or otherwise) is hard. You can barely keep your own life in order but you also have to think about the well being of someone else and keep up with whats happening in their life. I can say I have messed up A LOT. With friends, "more than friends", acquaintances. But at the same token people have messed me up, sometimes at no fault of their own but it becomes a difficult thing to manage when you crave something from someone that they're not giving you. I think any relationship is built on expectation. You expect certain things from the people you're close to and when they don't fulfil these expectations then you're left thinking that this person isn't a real friend or they've wronged you somehow. But just as we have certain expectations of how we want others to act towards us we also have expectations in the reverse.
It's like an unwritten charter. When you get into a relationship you both sign and you'll either sink or swim. Right? Actually... it's not that simple. Expectations change and it's not something you openly discuss usually. Whats the definition of a friend, a girlfriend, a wife? How are they expected to act? You become friends and lovers with the people where these expectations align. But when you're with someone and you realise they don't - it can hurt. I've been on both sides of it and even though I do think I have done wrong and been wronged I also think a lot of it comes down to the misalignment of these expectations. Well a simple solution would just be talking - but do you remember how I started this blog post?
This isn't a post to garner sympathy. It's not a post to subvertly reference something specific that's happened to me recently. It's just an almagamation of thoughts and feelings I've had for a while so if I'm feeling it, then I'm sure others are too. We are not surrounded by bad people or people who set out to do us harm. Do bad people exist? - yes. Do people do you harm? - Of course. But when it comes down to it, the majority of people are not thinking about you most of the time. As much as we do have people in our lives that play a big role, in the grand scheme of our entire lives they are just a small cog in a massive machine.
Cogs fail, but they can be fixed, or replaced and sometimes some cogs can be redundant.