I love watching people.
I'm a big advocate of noticing the little things. One of my best friends has a tendency of calling me Sherlock because of it. I'm maddening in an evil genius kind of way and I like to look at the details of people. My friend is the Watson to my Sherlock and I love my Watson dearly.
You can learn a lot about someone based on the tiny details.
Sometimes when I'm watching people in the cafeteria, a girl whom I don't particularly care for will walk by, pretentiously proud, carrying a plate of salad that she's doctored up because her mother taught her how to eat healthy and make it yummy at the same time or some other adorable domestic backstory like that. I picture an image of a little girl with a mother (probably wearing matching aprons) helping her stir something "made from love" with a wooden spoon in a kitchen filled with light and laughter. It's endearingly nauseating.
Said girl in the cafeteria will then gracefully slide into a plastic chair, look at her culinary creation the way a mother might look at her newborn babe, and delicately munch her food. She is a songbird, perched on a branch, tasting and relishing the healthy meal, eating like a lady and laughing at something clever a fellow bird has chirped from across the table.
I will sit and look at this girl, no, this lady *snort* and think, now this girl has her life together.
The girls that cook their food at the DIY station instead of going for pre made pizza. The girls that braid their hair in cute styles in the morning. The girls who have metal flowers on their keychains and know how to sew. The girls who have guys think they're sensitive and feminine and don't consider them a "bro"
The girls who will make great moms someday.
These chicks have their lives together.
When I see couples who are respectful, know the expectations of the other, and are totally gonna be awesome parents. The couples who stay in on Friday nights to watch movies and discuss philosophy. The couples who write each other cute sticky notes and leave them in binders. The couples who kiss each other good bye like it's second nature.
These assholes have their lives together.
And then I look down at my plate of nothing but mashed potatoes and french fries because I hate cafeteria food and have the culinary skills of a 3 year old making mud pies and think to myself, I've got to get my life together.
And I know in my heart that is a load of shit. I'll never be one of those people who "has their life together". What does that even mean? That there are certain people who are better than me because they are awesome at being dependable, or can cook, or can have a mature and healthy relationship? I've created this idea in my mind of what having it together looks like and that idea is a fucking lie.
All it boils down to is me thinking that I need to be at a certain point in my life right now in order to be a success. I look around me and I see people so content to just exist, do the conventional thing, and then die. I can't help feeling that it's a waste. But I need to realize that it's not a bad existence. It doesn't mean they're better or worse than me. It doesn't mean that they won't help or influence people. They're just different than me. They've had a different life than me. And that's okay.
I have to live my day as a series of deadlines. A series of chunks of time to get through to the next checkpoint. If I don't, I get overwhelmed by the magnitude of my responsibilities. I have short deadlines as well as long deadlines. I just keep thinking to myself, if I can just complete task A by this time then I won't have any stress after the deadline has passed. But that doesn't work because by the time task A is completed I've added tasks B, C, D, and E to my list for the next deadline. It's exhausting but it gets shit done.
I don't have my life together but I get shit done.
I sit in my corner of the cafeteria and sing to myself the ballad of the overachiever. I selfishly think that I'm gonna be great one day. And if I do end up being great, awesome. If I'm not great, that's okay too. But I can't keep comparing myself to people that "have their life together". I can't help but feel we're supposed to be working for something better, for a bigger picture that not any one person should be able to grasp. Maybe these people feel just the same as me. Maybe I'm a weirdo who likes to do everything she possibly can because she can't sit still. But it doesn't matter, we're all beautiful.
It's just hard to think that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be right now.
And I don't think I'll ever completely have my life together.
This is the Ranting of a High Functioning Sociopath, not a Psychopath.
I've done my homework.
~
Things I'm thankful for today:
1. Potato based foods
2. Fuzzy socks
3. Biology major friends who won't let me sit by myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment