i know you better in my head

I’ve always been a big day dreamer. I guess I’ve always had a really good imagination. As a kid, I always had these big ideas. I wanted to put speakers throughout my house when I was around 6 or 7 so we could constantly play music, which is kind funny now because I have music playing at all times of the day through my phone.

Then in elementary school and middle school, I had this idea of what high school was going to be like from watching movies like American Pie and different music videos, like the one for Thunder by Boys Like Girls. Everything was so romanticized in my head. I still continue to do this today and it has bit me in the ass so many times.

I think part of it stems from anxiety. A lot of times, I need to have an idea of what to expect. Within the last year, I realized how pointless this was because I’m obviously never going to predict what’s going to happen. This doesn’t mean I’ve stopped doing it though. More recently, I started hanging with this girl and she was great, so nice, easy to talk to, I had fun with her. I knew I liked her when I started romanticizing everything. I would imagine all the stuff we’d do together, etc etc etc. I had jumped so far ahead. This would be example where doing this really doesn’t help me out. But, a lot of the time, I can get so lost in my head and its actually super cool. With songs especially, I’ve always just developed my own music video for them in my head. Same with books too, certain books just put the best images in my head and its only specific to each individual person.

I don’t really know where I was going with this. In my head, it’s way easier to write about, but I guess that’s the whole point.

Years

Its been at least 2 years since I last used this blog. The last year and a half has been an interesting one. In the summer following my junior year, I hurt my back. Prior to this, I had been having some issues with some anxiety-ish stuff. After the back injury, it really overcome me. My head would just spin with all these different thoughts thinking I was depressed or wasn’t sure why I did what I did before in the first place. After a couple rough months where I’d be fine for a while, then other times I’d go for days at a time where I just didn’t feel like myself, I went and saw a therapist. It helped and I stopped going after a couple months of treatment. I finished my senior year of college then it hit me again. I had been thinking for a long time that I should go back but it was until May of this past year that I actually made a call and did it. My summer was great. It was really the best summer I’ve had in a few years. It was all leading up to a move to graduate school about 4 hours away. I have one year of eligibility left for soccer, so in addition to that, I’ll be getting a teaching certificate as well. I was really looking forward to moving out here.

I got here 4 days ago and it really sent me out of my comfort zone, which was expected. My parents were here and helped me move in. I’m so soft when it comes to my family and when they were leaving, I can’t say I didn’t get emotional. After that, I was good for a few days. I haven’t been sleeping all that well here, and I think that is often a big factor when it comes to my anxiety problems. The part of it that has been bothering me today has been a lack of interest in playing soccer, which I hate when this happens because it definitely isn’t true. Soccer is what I’ve done my whole life, its 60% of the reason I’m here, the other 40% being education, obviously. I’ve been coaching for 4 years also and I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Soccer in general is my thing. I love playing and coaching and helping others get better. Another thing I love to do is work out and get more fit than I was the day before. The thing that happens is if there is a day, like today, where I don’t really feel like doing that stuff, my mind tries to convince me that I don’t like doing that stuff anymore, which isn’t true. It always comes back around.

Sometimes it just doesn’t feel like things aren’t going right. I miss my family, my friends, and I really don’t know that many people here. Its tough. I need to stick to the reason why I came here. I came here to showcase my abilities and show those supporting me back home what I’m capable of. I will be okay. Its only going to make going home that much better.

Being in a new place is so weird for me. I needed to do it. I needed to see somewhere else and meet lots of new people. I’ll be okay.

Roots

What a summer it has been. There is just so much to talk about. Unfortunately, my actual summer is really only 6 weeks long because I have to be back at school for soccer during the second 6 weeks. I live close enough though that I can live at home and drive to practice everyday. Anyway, I started off the summer by getting that tattoo I talked about in my post before this one. Then I went so a spring concert at another school and met a really cool girl. I love the feeling of being able to write about someone other than my ex on here. Unfortunately, this new girl and I didn’t work out. No hard feelings, she’s great but it was just the right person and the wrong time.

What I really wanted to write about here was this past weekend. When I’m at school, I love coming home. Lots of people complain about the town that I’m from. They say its trashy and there’s nothing to do. I guess I can agree with this at times. But this weekend made me realize that it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s the people you are with that can make anywhere great. One of my good friends went back to school in Florida today. So we had a going away get together this past Friday. It was fun, kind of an average party like we’re used to. THEN, the next day was the best part. I spent the whole day at graduation parties. While this was happening, a guy I played high school soccer with was having a huge party at his house for his 23rd birthday. All of my friends and I planned on stopping by later in the day. We went to my one friends house and pre-gamed (I didn’t drink on Saturday because I had fitness testing today) then we went up to the party. It was so much fun. There were a lot of people there that were a few years older than us, but they were all people I knew from high school and I hadn’t seen in so long. It was so good seeing everyone. Even without drinking it was still a ton of fun. Yesterday (Sunday) all of my friends went to the Pirate game. Unfortunately I couldn’t go because I had an unofficial team meeting at school.

The point is: that was the most fun I’ve had in my hometown in a long time. It was the way things should be all the time. It almost made me not want to go back to school for soccer. I mean of course I want to, but that weekend was the fun I’ve been missing out on for so long. Now I’m just really looking forward to being able to do that with all of my friends again. I turn 21 in the fall and next summer will be better than ever. I guess you can complain all you want about where you’re from or you can make the best of it. No matter what, you can’t change your roots.

Looking Forward

Today, a song came on while my phone was on shuffle that I hadn’t heard in a really long time. A song that took me back to my senior year of high school, when it was pretty much the soundtrack to my life. That song is Placeholder by The Story So Far. I had first started listening to TSSF about midway through my senior year. Placeholder was one of the first songs I heard by them. As that year of school went on, I realized how spot on that song was with my life at the time. At the time, I was dealing with some back and forth feelings for a girl that wouldn’t even speak to me. Our whole relationship was so shitty. I wanted to just get away from it so bad, but I couldn’t because we saw each other every day at school. The first half of that song is about dealing with being on the shitty end of seeing something come to an end.

“I’m looking for an option that won’t involve you at all. Some help to hoist my sail off of its mast.”

I felt so wronged by it all. I never did anything wrong, yet I was the bad guy.

“But I hope you go home and admit you, were wrong for the stress you put me through. Free from the anchor, depart these seas and let me do what I have to do.”

I spent that whole year trying to figure out what I was going to do about the whole situation when there was really nothing that could be done. That year seemed like such a low in that aspect of my life. In other parts, I was so pumped to go to college and play a division 1 sport. I was pumped about who I was, and who I was going to be. There was nothing ahead of me but opportunity. I guess I just really wanted that someone there to see out the end of high school with.

“Running around in circles, the path I always choose.”

But beyond that…

I remember in those last months of high school how excited I was about what was next. I was flying forward with nothing to slow me down.

“Headstrong in the world, with the wind at my back.”

This was the most important line. I heard it in my head all the time. I even thought about getting it tattooed. No matter what kind of stuff you have to deal with, there are always bigger things ahead. And there were.

This past winter was a rough one. It was like I fell into the biggest rut and I just climbed out a couple weeks ago. The cold really got to me, I was actually depressed. I was stuck in the worst routine. I forgot about what is like to look ahead and be excited about who you are. I lost myself. I totally forgot who I was. I spent a lot of time this winter thinking back, wishing things were like they used to be. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being nostalgic, but when you think about how much things have changed as often as I did, it can really bring you down. Things will never be the same again. During my senior year, I wasn’t thinking about the past, I was only thinking about the present and what was next. Hearing Placeholder again reminded me of what it’s like to be excited about your life  and where it’s going and that’s a feeling that should never go away. Sometimes you just need that something that will remind you not to think about the past so much and finally know that you’re moving forward and not looking back.

Maybe I will get those lyrics tattooed…

So It Goes…

Time. It’s something you start to become more aware of as you continue to get older. You start to notice more and more how much time has passed and how fast it seems to go by. I always found it mind boggling and worrying that life seems to go faster every single year. I remember being in 7th grade, 13 years old, and so aware of life flying by. I remember one day in class, my teacher was talking about something relating to the fact and one of the most unlikely of my classmates shook his head disparingly and said, “life goes faster every year.” I wasn’t the only one plagued with these thoughts. It was not until later that I realized that there was a perfectly logical reason as to why time feels like it’s going so quickly. People often think that years are getting shorter. This is because a year becomes shorter compared to the amount of time you have been a live. To a 5 year old, a year is 20% of their entire life. To a 20 year old, it is only 5%. It’s so simple, yet so worrisome at the same time.

I find myself sometimes longing to be a kid again. I’d love to be back in elementary school where life was just life. You just lived it. Stress didn’t exist. Time didn’t exist. It just went by. The future seemed so far off, it was almost as if it didn’t exist. I remember being in elementary school and hearing teachers talk about college which was always follwed by, “you guys still have a while yet.” Now here I am, closing in on the end of my sophomore year of college. College. The 7 letters that were so far down the road, and then they just hit you like a bus. You spend so many years just living without a worry in the world and then all of those worries you thought you’d never have just appear. Life is weird. Time is weird. 
Just before spring break, I bought 4 books. One of those books was Slaughterhouse-V by Kurt Vonnegut. I read about half of it during the past week and I loved everything about it. So far, I think the story, possibly unintentionally, pokes at how weird life is. It’s crazy how you can get lost when everything is right in front of you. Oh well.
So it goes.

Words

I’m not really sure why I felt so compelled to write tonight. I just watch the movie “Stuck in Love”. It’s a movie about a family, made up of a dad and his son and daughter and they are all writers. They live in a house on the beach in what looks like North or South Carolina. As soon as I learned of the plot of the movie, I knew I had to see it. The father, who is a very successful author, makes his kids keep journals. It seems as though he knew they were both natural born writers. As it turns out, his daughter comes home from college to announce that she is having her first book published and the movie seems to take off from there.

There’s something about people who read and write. I don’t mean that in the sense of people who are simply literate, but people who actually read books for fun I guess. It seems like people don’t read as much as they used to. What I’m trying to say can fit in with music too. When you look for meaning in something, it changes your perspective on what that thing is. Music and books are fascinating because you are either reading or hearing came straight from the mind of a completely different person. It’s trivial almost. Of course that’s the case. But it’s so much deeper than that. Having the ability to describe a complex emotion with words is an amazing thing. I don’t think most people see that. People see words for what they are, right there, in front of them and that’s it. But, the brilliance of the words lay beyond face value.

One of my favorite mixtures of words comes from a song by Third Eye Blind called Motorcycle Drive By. My favorite line specifically is, “You smile, and say the world it doesn’t fit with you. I don’t believe you. You’re so serene. Careening through the universe, your axis on a tilt. You’re guiltless and free. I hope you take a piece of me with you.” Every time I hear that line, it just puts such an image in my mind. It conveys what feels like every emotion Stephan Jenkins felt. Putting my thoughts and emotions into words is something I feel like I’ve never been very good at. I never feel like there are enough words to do it. But when you can do it, something amazing can arise from it.

Emotionally Unavailable

My winter break began on December 19th. I was in the middle of studying for a grueling finals week when communication between my infamous ex and I started to peak. Earlier in the semester, she had texted me about her coming to my campus while school was still in session and coming out on a weekend. I wasn’t against it.

The Friday before finals week. She came down to my house off campus. From there we went to one of my team mates house to drink. It was pretty enjoyable. We talked a lot because I was the only person she knew, and she only acts like she doesn’t know me when we are around people we both know. She was the fun girl I thought I knew back in high school. We finished the night at my house with a movie. Nothing happened.

I felt weird after that night. I didn’t know if it was feelings coming back or just lust because I’m definitely still attracted to her. She’s gorgeous. I’d definitely hook up with her if I got the chance.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to just ignore it. So, I texted her the day about that weird feeling. I told her it was fun and it reminded me of how things used to be. She said something along the lines, of “oh it wouldn’t have been good to act on those feelings.” I asked why. She said because it wouldn’t get us anywhere. In my head, I’m thinking well maybe we can hang out and maybe hook up over break without anything getting difficult and we could go to back to whatever it was we were before break, whether it was friends or just acquaintances. I slowly brought this up during the conversation and she was definitely flirting back and we made plans to hang out again.
The following Wednesday was the day we were supposed to hang out. We hadn’t talked in a few days and I was waiting for her to text me, or vice versa to confirm the plans. I got a text from her around 4 saying exactly what I was afraid of. She said she wasn’t sure if us hanging out was a good idea because things might get complicated. Long story short, we ended up hanging out that night and we made out for a bit. Whatever. Following this, I thought over break we could hang out and do “couple stuff” just not as a couple. That was so not the case. None of that happened. I’m sitting here now with two days of break left and I haven’t seen her since before Christmas.

On New Years Eve, we both went to the town where I go to college, but we were at different parties. Now, leading up to this, I had texted her a couple times asking to hang out and she promptly ignored my invitation every time. I texted her on New Years Eve asking her if she was in the same town as me. She said “yeah why?” I said, “oh so am I” (I was going to work my way to the “do you want to meet up?” text). She responded with, “cool.” And down the rabbit hole I went. Keep in mind, I was pretty buzzed at the time. I sent back 5 texts. They all pretty said what I’ve been wanting to say. “Why have you been being so weird?” We were friends last week.” Yeah yeah. This spawned a 2 hour argument about how we aren’t dating and she doesn’t have to answer me if she doesn’t want to. I said fine okay. Last week you were talking about how you didn’t want to ruin our super close friendship and this week your ignoring me. Reasonable, definitely. Once I smashed her side of the argument, she began to shame me for asking so much of her when she was sad and depressed about some family issues. Now, I texted her over break about some of these things that happened. We live in the same town, so I was aware. She thanked me for my empathy and that was it. Based on her snapchat stories and what not, she seemed to be going on with her life completely as normal. So what would cause me to think that these events were taking such a toll on her? Had she just said something about it, I wouldn’t have pressed her about why she was ignoring me. She was so adamant about how she didn’t want to mess with our friendship. I just didn’t understand how she couldn’t see the contradiction in behavior there.

I guess my point of this is, we are too old (I’m 20) to beat around the bush. I thought when I went to college, the games would cease. That is so not the case. They seem to be more prevalent than ever. People just don’t know how to have actual relationships anymore, whether it’s a platonic or romantic one.

I’ve had a soft spot for my ex for a while. At this point, I know we could never be together again and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be. Although, I want her to be the best version of herself she can be. But she’s just so frustrating. She pushes away everyone who cares. I’ve rewritten this last sentence 11 times, but I’m just too frustrated to come up with a solid conclusion…

Trapped in my head

Wow its been so long. I wonder if anyone still evens remember this blog. I’m sure all 25 of my close followers weren’t terribly hurt by yet another hiatus of mine. As it long as it has been, I feel that this is a perfect time to write another post.

This past weekend was an interesting one. To provide some background information, as of recently I finally declared a major. After a year and almost a half of college, I decided to pursue a degree in political science. This is kind of odd because prior to the prominence of the 2016 election coming about, I never had any interest in politics. I couldn’t even have told you what parties stand for what. Now, I’m so into it. I think what really got me so interested in politics was finding out where my own beliefs fit on the spectrum. I’ll admit, I am on the left side of things, for the most part.

Anyway so now onto more background information. I’ve always been a huge proponent of the ‘I don’t know’ mentality about things. I don’t know if I’ve written about conspiracy theories on here, but I occasionally dive into the rabbit hole that are conspiracy theories. I always thought they were so interesting because there’s just so many things you don’t know. I wasn’t there, how could I know anything for sure? The news has been known to distort and cover up things. You never really know for sure. This mindset is also where I tend to lean with religion. I’ve never given a proper explanation of this either, so here it goes:

I remember it was in 8th grade when I realized that I really didn’t believe in a god. I was raised catholic and for the early years of my life we went to church. Then we gradually stopped attending, but I still had to go to Sunday school. It was miserable. I don’t think anyone liked it. Then, one day in 8th grade, my teacher told us we were going to have a debate. There were three sides: one was evolution, one was the creationism, religious side of things, and the other was kind of a mixture of both. She told us that each side would congregate at a different side of the room. When she told us to go to these sides, I got up and went straight to the evolution side without a single thought about it. All of my classmates from Sunday school were on the religious side. The debate was uneventful. The next weekend, I was in “class” at Sunday school and some of my class mates were talking about the debate and one of the girls turned to me and said “and you were on the evolution side.” That’s kind of where it hit me. I thought to myself, “holy shit, I don’t believe in any of this shit.” And it was true. From then on, I slowly receded away from religion and it felt great. For 5 years, I’ve been secular. For those of you that may not know, secular essentially means without religion. I’ve always felt it was unnecessary. I’d always felt it was ridiculous that I had to learn about all these things I couldn’t do and basically have other people tell me how to live my life. I know what’s morally right and wrong. I don’t need someone else to tell me.

This is probably enough background information to go on. So this weekend, I did some homework. I also spent a lot of time watching documentaries and videos on youtube relating to science and evolution and how religion and science can’t stand side by side. You have to believe one of them and if you’re a rational person, you take the side of science. I had just finished watching a documentary on netflix called “The Unbelievers.” It was a film about scientists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. Two brilliant scientists and also atheists. It was a great film. I would highly recommend it. i went to bed feeling so happy. I woke up the next morning with my mind in a fog. I began to question everything from the certainty of science to my own beliefs on religion. I kept thinking what if science is wrong, what if i’m wrong. What if somehow all the science and evidence in the world is all wrong? This phenomenon lasted like two days. I was seriously tripping out and I couldn’t figure out why. Today, I finally snapped out of it. I think I had been living a mind of certainty for such a long period of time. After I declared my major, I don’t know, it was like my ‘I don’t know’ mentality kind of slipped away. I was taking things for how I read them and saw them. It had been so long since I asked the question ‘why?’and it just overloaded my head. Everything was why why why. Right now, I sit here typing this completely back to normal. It was such an odd occurrence to happen. I was actually asking myself, “what was happening to me?” I think I also realized during this time that there’s so much I don’t know and even beyond that, so much we as a species don’t know and may never know. Its so hard to come to terms with something like that. Just like its extremely hard to comprehend that humans evolved over millions of years because we can’t even think in terms of a million years. I think its good to have your beliefs challenged every now and then. It keeps your feet on the ground. Sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. Times like these, I put on my headphones, lay in my room in the dark, listen to Angels & Airwaves and trip out about the complexities of space and time.

Transition

The past few days have been interesting. I talked in my last blog post about when I started soccer last year and college and how I had such a tough time making that transition from being home all the time to being on my own. Last year was definitely a lot harder than this year but its still can feel difficult at times. To be honest, I love being at home. There’s just so much I miss about it. My dog, my bed (I have the most comfortable bed on Earth), my family. I do see my family pretty often still because my college is so close to home.

Anyway, so I think I’ve figured out that I am just not good with that transition period during a significant change in my life. I’m sure I’m not the only one out there with this issue, but stuff like this just gets to me. For example, junior year when I spent over a year fighting for that one girl and then we broke up after 3 months, I was messed up for months. Still to this day, I think about her from time to time. Although, she’s not the same person she was back then, but I always wonder. I guess that change is similar in significance to making the transition to college and living on you’re own and playing college soccer. It’s like that in between period where you don’t really know whats what yet. I really don’t do well with that.

I’ve been saying this forever, but hopefully this year I’ll get myself into some kind of relationship. I hate that I say that because people say that you have to be happy by yourself before you can be happy with someone else and be happy on your own. Yeah yeah. Having someone (besides this blog) to be able to talk to about just anything would be so awesome. I’m laying here in my new bed thinking about the praised “netflix and chill” date. Let me tell you, this bed would be absolutely perfect for it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I actually had strong feelings for a girl. Well, actually, yeah I could because it was high school and the girl I write about way too much. I guess that’s the only experience I can relate anything relationship related to.

I’m definitely bad with transitions by the way. ^^^

Everywhere At Once

This time last year, I was having the hardest time with making the transition into college soccer, more broadly college life as a whole. Now I’m back to that same exact time a year later where the transition has already been made. Summer was long and short at the same time. I feel like it flew by, but at the same time, I’ve been home for over 3 months. The carelessness of summer is coming to a close. The semester doesn’t start until the 31st of August, but preseason practices unofficially start tomorrow. I can’t wait to play soccer everyday again. I’m definitely not looking forward to classes starting. All they do is add stress to my life and remind me that I have no idea what I want to do with my life after college.

I always get so many ideas or thoughts I guess when I’m doing other things. Then, the second I get my laptop open, my brain goes from being everywhere at once to being in a more relaxed place. Today was kind of a reflective day, on the summer and on the place I’m in as a whole with college and soccer and every other aspect of my life. I’m still so single and it blows. Girls anymore are so backwards, and I’m sure guys are too. I don’t know. It just seems so hard to meet people anymore without some sort of social media being involved. For example, there’s this girl that I kinda sorta grew up with. She’s my step grandfathers niece’s daughter or something like that. Long story short, we’re not related. That seems to be the first thing people hear when I explain it. Anyway so we have only seen each other like 3-4 times in the past 5 years. We just so happen to go to the same college. So throughout the year, we snap chatted and texted and what not and I always asked to see if she wanted to hang out. She was always down, but always said she busy and would let me know. We never hung out. Then, the families got together on the 4th of July. This was the first time we’d seen each other in a long time. We were there for hours and we barely spoke. I started conversation with her a few times but it didn’t really go anywhere. After so long, I started thinking that I should just cross this one off the list. We left and on the way home, she snap chatted me saying, “we finally got to hang for a little.” Are you kidding? Naturally, i snap chatted back with “yeah sort of” and after that we started texting and snap chatting again for about 2 weeks. Same thing. We talked about hanging out, she said she wanted to, and it still hasn’t happened yet. But she will still snap chat me every so many days. This is so backwards. I’ve got zero interest in getting to know people through texting or snap chatting. That is so ridiculous. But this seems to be the way things are now. You can try to fight it, or go with the flow and neither seem to work.