The End: Chapter 1

So I deleted my facebook. What that means is I'll probably spend more time on here construing all my lovely would-be facebook statuses into constructive paragraphs that simulate actual coherent and reasonable thought. So much has happened within the past few years:

-To quote an REM song, I nearly lost my religion.

-I moved to California on an unsuccessful whim only to move back 6 months later and lose a good friend who was my roommate over a poorly constructed living situation.

-Still sadly at the age of 26, I have not completed a basic 4 years of college at Penn State to obtain a bachelors.

-Lost my license and car

-And currently have moved back in with my mother.

Looking at the overall scheme of things, most people who do not know me well would think I'm most likely a complete loser going absolutely nowhere in life. I would almost have to agree except the problem isn't that I'm stupid or lazy. On contrary, it's because I am absolutely restless that I've made very stupid decisions and I made those stupid decisions because I've been very, very, very bored with life to the point that I never finished anything that I set out to complete due to a very short attention span. I had to keep moving constantly looking for a new thrill, new interests to flee from my problems. My biggest flaw, perhaps, was that I was a coward.



Hitting 26 last December and realizing that I am indeed getting very old really fast I reached a bit of an epiphany. I have humbled myself from arrogant youth and have done a lot of self-discovery and re-evaluation of friendships and of the things I once thought important in life. You can judge me and doubt me if you'd like and your negativity would be understandable. I would be reading this myself thinking "This girl is absolutely crazy," but if it's one thing I do hate the most it's to lose. I have lost a lot recently and I not only seek to gain back all the things I've lost from wasting so much time but I also seek to make the people who have been helpful in foddering my failure and enjoying the benefits of it seethe with anger at the very sight of my success.



Although I have had a lot of failures in the past few years, I have actually had a few small successes. For one, I have curbed my raging appetite for partying and consuming Lohan-amounts of alcohol, therefore, taming my alcoholism into normal society-acceptable consumption through moderation. I have completely quit smoking cigarettes for over a year. I smell them now and can't believe I ever indulged in such a putrid, smelly habit. I have been paying off my debts and cleaning up my credit little by little with the money I've saved living back at home with my mother. I enrolled in part-time school at a local community college so I can regain my Penn State financial aid status and then I can return this coming fall to finally complete my final 2 years and gain my bachelors (maybe the market will be better by then anyway). I found a good job at Starbucks where I enjoy what I do and the company of the people I work with and no longer have to suffer migraines from the idiocy of the general public working at that dreadful unnamed cellphone call center. And I've cut off tons and tons of unhealthy friendships that were laden with so much drama that they sapped the living daylight out of me and needed so much maintenance and care that I barely gave time or so much a thought to myself. Lastly today, I deleted my facebook removing myself from the terrible addictive pull of trivial and meaningless social networking. Not to say all social networking is bad but I found the overshare of personal information, drama, and upkeeping of facebook so unproductive, distracting, and time-consuming that for the sake of sanity I've suspended it indefinitely until I can get my life back together.



My mother always told me one thing over and over again. Ok well actually she's told me tons of things over and over but the most fresh to mind and relative to my current situation is "Friends do one of the following things. They either pull you down, drag you along, or lift you up. The type of people you surround yourself with will be the people you mirror. If you hang around successful people, you will strive for success. If you hang around people not going anywhere in life, you will be content with mediocrity." Now my mother is not the new Ghandi but this definitely to me became quite profound. Initially, I brushed it off thinking I was aware and mature enough to realize when I was being steered into such ridiculous form of peer pressure. But deeper and deeper I fell blindly into some crazy, twisted, unrecognizable life until finally I was unable to wake up and recognize myself in the mirror. I didn't recognize what I did or said. I couldn't even take myself seriously. I was a joke. Rock bottom grabbed me violently and no matter where I turned dead-end after dead-end blocked my path. I flailed around endlessly only to find that my only way out was back from where I'd came.



I guess in essence over the past year, I became the proverbial prodigal son going off squandering my inheritance wherever I pleased, doing whatever I pleased, and scanning for shortcuts to life's more complicated processes thinking there'd be happiness and success at the end of it all only to come to a halting realization that I had nothing left. There was no happiness nor success and thus I'm back to where I started grabbing at that second chance desperately. One thing I can say I've learned out of this terrible mess is that I've definitely have learned to trust myself more and other people less.



After all, who knows me better than me? I will return here often to unravel to you slowly what all has happened as life has a funny way of twisting current situations back to previous events. So here's to 2011. A more mature me. A year full of completion. A year full of dreams that will come true. A year for new beginnings and happier endings. Here's to a new volume in my life as I use this old forum to tell a new tale in which I share my proudest moments and heart-breaking disappointments, the lessons I learn from both, and the person I transform into as a result.