Have you ever not done as well? Have you ever given everything you have just to end up empty wondering what was the point of trying so hard in the first place? This is my relationship with writing. No matter how hard I try, no matter how extreme my lust for success is, I always find myself coming up empty in someway. There is nothing that makes me stall as much and that keeps me as idle as this. No book, nor movie, or album can ever keep me in perpetual lack of motion than can when I don’t succeed at the one thing I set out to succeed at.

I wasn’t gifted with a natural ability to convey my thoughts, I have never been a good reader, and recently I have found it harder and harder to pay attention to work and people, so much that it is concerning. When I was little, I must have missed the day in school when the teachers said, “alright kids, today we are going to learn how to convey our emotions, and succeed in making others understand us,” because I can’t do either of those things. Even though I pride myself on language and the ability to convey complex emotions, thoughts, and feelings, I still stumble over my words when I talk, get distracted by some other conversation or thought, and fail to show others what I want them to see.

My favorite thing is when I stumble over words, thoughts, and phrases, or say things grammatically incorrect, and people say, “aren’t you a writing major?” as a way of making fun. This is demeaning to me because I truly do struggle with words, and reading, and your saying of that makes me question everything I am working for.

I have had to work for so much in my life. In high school, I wasn’t initially put into the higher level English and History classes. I had to earn my way into them. In college, each semester I have been working harder to get a better GPA than the last. In life, I have worked, with much failure, steadily to gain more long-lasting and genuine friendships. Everything I have in life is because I put my nose to the grindstone and worked for it, and when people who don’t know what I have gone through rocket pass me with their success and accolades I find myself not understanding why I try, hating myself for not being successful, and pulling hair out in endless frustration as I try to figure out where I went wrong.

I want few things else than to be the best, but I am not the best, I’m not even in the conversation. I repeatedly find myself in the throes of mediocrity, as I try to get my distracted self back to work to create something meaningful. I never do.

This also produces an excruciating dissonance within my mind as my life’s philosophy is dependent on the constant wanting to better myself. This mentality has got me where I find myself today. However, it seems that every time I gain momentum I hit a wall and regress back to where I started mentally. There is a cacophonous, melancholic feeling you get when you are a modern embodiment of Sisyphus, when you try to move up the mountain but keep having to restart over and over again.

There is a lot going on in my life. I am finding out a lot while simultaneously trying to figure out where I am going and what the best course of action is. However, in this season it seems that the kind words of others don’t help. There are problems that are simply unfixable by reassurance.

I definitely have some maintenance to do, but I will continue to do what I have always done. Deconstruct and build back up.