Harboring Passive-Aggressive Tendencies

Today is one of those days where nothing I do is right and everything I think makes me feel wound up and unsuccessful. Thank goodness these days are rare, and thank goodness I can always remain objective enough to recognize what's going on, but it's still wearing. I slept until noon, only to get up and have my self-loathing triggered by a harmless conversation with a person who I suddenly felt was too good to even be talking to me. For the rest of the afternoon I just shut down and couldn't function, so I went back to bed until leaving for the barn. While going there I called my parents, like I always do, and just sat there and cried on the phone for a half hour or so. It was pitiful. I think I'm handling this semester admirably, and considerably better than most, but my stress finally caught up with me.

It's a vicious cycle when I become stressed. First of all, I get angry at myself, and then I add to that by getting angry that I'm getting angry at myself. It's absurd. But I start cycling around and feeling worthless and ineffectual until something finally snaps me out of it. When I got home from the barn I was about to shut down again before Jason finally told me it was time for tough love and I needed to get a grip. I did. Now I'm at the library. I'm a third of the way done with my PA story, so I figured I'd take a quick break.

I decided to change the focus of my story to procrastination, since it's one of the factors leading to today's rottenness. I was downstairs sifting through books (just being down there with that smell of ink and paper is calming) and doing research when I found some information that struck a chord. Evidently most procrastinators are acting passive-aggressively and harbor perfectionistic distortions, especially if they have creative tendencies. I felt like that hit me dead-on. It helps to see my bad behavior so coldly and clinically laid out before me. I need to be told when I'm being bad, otherwise I just carry on. It's nice to know I've got people who will call me out on my wicked whims.

Tomorrow I will be just dandy. In fact, I'm feeling pretty good right now. It could be because I've gotten a total of about 16 hours of sleep for the day, or it could be that I'm just back on track. I have to say that every day I'm thankful that I'm not a depressed or anxious person. It's way too tiring. It's so much better to be who I really am, which is someone who can be completely content and deeply satisfied with herself and her world. There are things that I want to change, of course, like my procrastinating and sometimes self-destructive behaviors, and I'm getting there, and that just makes me happier.

I've got to get rid of my guilt more than anything else. If I didn't let myself get behind in school, I wouldn't feel guilty about going out to see a movie or leaving town for a break. I think if I had to pick the worst thing to feel, it's feeling guilty. It's all right to feel sad or angry or frustrated, but feeling guilty means there's something wrong with me. I need to fix everything and move on.

So that's what I'm after for the rest of the semester. I'm going to go to Nashville guilt-free this weekend, to see Erin and Chris--it should be great fun, it's just too bad the Georgia boys can't join us. I'm going to go guilt-free home for Thanksgiving and sleep in my favorite bed of all with my childhood around me and my parents down the hall. I'm going to go guilt-free into Christmas break with a good newspaper left behind me, grad school applications sent off, and an airline ticket back to Adam waiting for New Year's.

I can't afford to feel guilty any longer. My life is waiting.