first shift
I felt pretty frazzled during my coffee order this morning. I never realized how unsure of myself I actually am, or can be. I didn't know where to lock my bike earlier, I didn't hear what the barista said to me, I'm sitting here arguing with myself about if I'm actually unsure of myself or if it's justified because I'm new to this city, I did end up being decisive about locking my bike to the sign post...
Well someone—holding a motorcycle helmet so who I automatically think is cool—held the door open for me when I got here. That was sweet, and made me feel good, before what just categorized itself in my brain as "the ordering fiasco". Man it wasn't that bad.
Life is simpler in the woods.
It's the We—Thursday after my first shift. Wednesday went by too fast. When I turned the music on after getting in my car off-shift, it sounded like I was hearing the lyrics of the song for the first time. I guess I usually tune out some of the lyrics, or there's just not enough room in my brain to process them. It went back to normal pretty quickly though.
My week in-field was awesome. The first two days were really long and I was tired and unable to connect with the kids, but we started taking intentional breaks (personal time) on the third day and that was a game changer. These kids have big emotions, but the emotions aren't wrong. The emotions are what keep them alive. They're the silliest, goofiest, intelligent, creative kids that I've gotten to spend time with. So different from what I call the "STEM nerds" at UCSD. (To be fair there are also some really really cool, interesting, creative, STEM nerds at UCSD. And I've also heard every one of them self-reference as mentally ill.) But back to the general population of STEM nerd, my distaste for them comes from their robotic, depression inducing existence. Let me clarify. These are the people spending painstaking hours studying and working for classes that they don't care about, have no personal interest in, but need to ace. They do this usually in exchange for having any time or energy for personal interests and sometimes even personal hygiene/self care, let alone self love. This makes them a drag to be with because all they do is complain about how exhausted they are and how much school sucks. Well I'm taking an awesome science fiction class (that has nothing to do with my major) where I'm learning so many cool things I'd love to talk about, but you'd turn that into a pity party about how school is such a drag for you.
And I'm not blaming anyone for lacking self love, but I don't think that trying to squeeze yourself into a mold you don't fit for the sake of other people's expectations is the path to loving yourself. If you're constantly complaining about a certain thing, that's a sign to ~do something about it~ (this goes for significant others as much as situations). And [take the rest of this paragraph as my evolving, grain-of-salt opinion] I think where the depressed/suicidal think "if I can't be loved as myself, I don't want to be here", the productive robots of society think "if I can't be loved as myself, I'll be whatever you will love". The thing that both of these populations share is pain, and we all need to learn acceptance and love. The "actively" ill need better coping and regulation skills, so those big emotions don't take control; the "passively" ill need better coping and regulation skills, so they can express themselves authentically and experience joy. Idk, just some introductory thoughts, definitely a little too binary for my liking. Essentially, I'm making connections because we automatically see the mentally ill population as "other", but I think if we don't start seeing "them" as "us", it's going to get really ugly.
Writing helps. Editing helps. Probably taking a second to drink water and breath after a bike ride helps.