Future, What Future?

What do you do when you begin to wonder if you're truly cut out for the career path you've started down? What do you do when you begin to question everything that you've been striving for? It seemed so clear initially, everything made sense. But as time passes, it becomes less and less clear. I went for the more practical career, the one that was respectable and made sense. I've always loved animals, always been good with them. But the science of it all makes my head spin, makes it hard to enjoy what I'm doing. So I start to wonder, is it for me. And then I come back to, god, what a failure I would be again if I gave it up with just two semesters to go. But then, what does it say when I dread going back and trying to wrap my mind around all these complex procedures. I love animals, but is that enough? And more and more, I'm thinking not. I find the science interesting, fascinating even, but the understanding of it often eludes me.

Just Be Held

So this is going to be a brutally honest post about myself, so word to the wise that it's going to be a bit dark and depressing and weird because that's basically my life.  So here goes.

So lately I've been struggling with a lot of stuff with life and just personally with my depression.  I've been feeling very stuck in life, not knowing where I'm going and just feeling like I'm really going nowhere and feeling very hopeless.  It's gotten to the point where I started cutting again a couple weeks ago and actually did some research on suicide methods.  I always end up realizing that I'm too much of a coward to actually go through with it which in some ways makes me more depressed.  So nobody panic, I'm not going to go kill myself or anything, so no worries.  Basically though I've felt like my life is just going to pieces.

My mom, being the intuitive mother that she is, realized that I've been struggling lately and sent me a song by Casting Crowns that she thought would be good for me.  Now here's where things start getting serious.  I don't listen to much Christian music anymore, mainly because I don't feel like I'm really a Christian anymore.  I've never figured that I was a particularly strong Christian.  I always struggled with my faith even when I was younger and was active in church and youth group and about as much of a church kid/teen as is possible.  I struggled with trusting in someone other than myself.  I was bullied and teased a lot when I was younger and I became the strong, tough kid who became a bit of a bully herself.  I learned to swear, to make myself more physically imposing so people would leave me alone, and when someone teased or made fun of me, I responded right back.  I stopped letting people in.  I was a weird kid and was never really accepted by other kids anyway.  At public school I had friends who would suddenly decide they didn't want to be friends with me because the cool kids didn't like me or the cool kids would pretend to accept me into their group and then ditch me.  I learned early on not to trust people.  At church I was also teased and judged and generally left out which could be part of the reason I have so much trouble fitting into a church, because I'm thinking everyone there is judging me and I'm this outsider and don't belong.  So that's the long explanation of why I figure I have so much trouble with trusting in God or anyone else and leaning on Him with things in life, big and small.  I feel like I have to fix myself by myself.  "Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know."  Yeah, I totally get Elsa.

Trusting Through the Doubt

When I can't sleep or I'm up late reading a book or doing something on my computer, I tend to think a lot.  Tonight was a reading night and now it's almost 2 o'clock and I'm still awake and thinking and looking at facebook.  Now normally I don't look at people's pages all that often.  But tonight I was looking at some friend's pages and a few of them were recently engaged or in a relationship and had pictures up.  Looking at the pictures of them so happy in love I felt that familiar clenching of my heart that's part pain, part jealousy.  And as I kept looking at the pictures of these people that I had graduated with  or were only slightly older than me, I felt all the doubts coming back.  Doubting that God had someone out there for me, doubting that anyone could ever possibly love me, doubting that I could ever truly love someone again myself.  And then there was the jealousy too.  Why did they get someone and I didn't?  Why couldn't I have that?  In a matter of minutes, I was dealing with a full on war between my heart and my head.  My head telling me that I was right to doubt and that my jealousy was rational, even reasonable, and my heart was simply naive.  And then there was my heart telling me to trust God and remember that He has a plan for me even though I can't see it and also telling my head to shut up.