She’s trying to figure it out
More stories from Alex Smith
She’s always different. It’s hard to be the same person with everyone. With one group, she’s talkative and funny. With one group, she’s quiet, rarely talking, just listening. With another, she’s a healthy medium: talking when she wants to, other times saying nothing.
When she is with herself, she is trying to be who she wants to be. It’s hard to be who she wants to be when she doesn’t know who that is. In theory, she wants to be a productive, healthy, and kind person. She wants people to like her. She wants to like herself. She wants to be happy.
It sounds easy to be that person, but she can’t seem to do it. She can’t seem to make herself be the person she wants to be. Her motivation has gone out the window—she feels like she’s floating between who she is and who she wants to be. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like who she is, she doesn’t like floating, and she doesn’t like that she can’t be who she wants.
She has good days–days where she thinks ‘this is who I want to be.’ Those days are few and far between. When they come around, she thinks ‘I can do this. I can be like this everyday. It’s not that hard.’ She’s lying to herself.
She wants to wake up early, workout, drink lots of water, eat healthy, but delicious food, do things she enjoys, and hang out with people she loves. She wants to be productive and feel good about what she does. She achieves most of these goals, but some slip through her fingers.
She eats delicious food, she does what she loves, she hangs out with people she loves. It’s hard to feel good about it though. It’s hard to be happy with what she’s doing. She wants to feel a sense of accomplishment when she does these things, but she doesn’t, and she can’t understand why.
On her good days, the days where she feels like she knows who she is, she knows what it’s like to be happy. She just can’t make those good days last longer than a day.
She’s working on it. It’s hard for her to do what she can to be herself. She tries to do something she loves everyday, and she tries to tell herself positive things. She’s trying really hard, and it doesn’t seem to be enough most days. She usually ends up wasting her time with things that don’t make her feel productive. It’s easy for her to quit, and she tries not to, but her brain doesn’t usually win that battle.
She has so much to work for. She has big dreams and aspirations. She knows she won’t reach her goals without hard work. She knows it. She knows she has to work harder. She knows her best won’t always be enough. That’s why she quits. If her best isn’t enough, what else is there? Sometimes she doesn’t see the point in doing her best if it won’t give her the results she wants.
She needs to try harder. In all aspects of her life she can be better. She’s going to try. She’s going to try her best and then some. This is her saying that she’s done with quitting. She wants to be the person she dreams of in her head. She wants to feel the way she fantasizes about and only she can get herself there.
She wants to be the same person with everyone. She doesn’t want to disguise her true identity from anyone because she wants to be proud of who she is. So she is going to be proud, or she is going to pretend she is until it’s true.
Alex is a senior entering her fourth and final year on staff for The Central Trend. She has been waiting for the opportunity to become Editor-in-Chief,...