Jenga

Twenty years old, twenty-one in a month, sixteen still feels like only a few days ago, and childhood feels like it never existed. At one point, I never thought I would make it to seventeen, then to twenty, and twenty-one just feels unreal. Each year I remain within my core and my values, yet every year is quite a challenge to remember what I want for my life. I want to remember and stay in the comfort of the past, yet I am determined to grow from everything.

I have accepted where I came from, and how lucky I am to be where I am today. Yet I know that I carry a lot of baggage, a lot I never speak about, a lot that no one has ever known, that I’ve kept hidden from any sight of light. I figure this is the reason that I find myself sitting lost, alone, scared, with no one to explain to. Every time I have tried, it often becomes the reason I am pushed away, or I push others away. It’s like I want people to know, but I’m afraid to be known. I’m afraid to be loved, to feel loved. I have been conditioned to believe that I will never be enough, from birth to the rest of my life, that I will be abandoned and left behind. So, there’s a little part of me, that feels peace when I know I am right about people; and that they will leave without looking back. I am waiting for people to turn around and wait for me, the way I do for them when they stop to tie their shoes, or if they are the ones holding the door for others, I wait, yet I feel no one has ever stopped for me, no one has ever looked back.

            I try my best, yet it’s often overlooked. Maybe that’s the trouble of being the child that never had to be worried about, the “perfect” angel child, the one who never needed help, the child that never had to be worried about. Pulling good grades, excelling in any project or hobby I set my mind to, who’s always been smarter than people have thought, and emotions that were difficult to regulate because everything external seemed fine. Perfect child, turned perfectionist, turned to people pleaser. Always do everything for everyone, never expecting anything in return because it was just expected for me to do these things. Childhood carried into adulthood, still don’t know what to do with that.

I kind of feel stuck because every day I try my best, I try to change for the better of myself, yet now that I tried to fix the people pleasing with boundaries, I always learn new things about myself that I never even knew. I give, and I give, and I give, and yet I always find out what people say about me, that I’m immature, or selfish, a bad person or something along those lines (NOTHING pisses me off more than that)… yet I believe in something completely different. I’ve always been told I’m mature for my age, that just means I had to grow up too fast, yet no one knows why. I’ve been told I’m selfish, and yeah I can be, but also, I am the person who makes time for everyone, regardless of how busy I am. I am the one to make sure everyone gets home safe. I am the one to sit with my friends in the bathroom for hours while they cry or are puking their guts out and holding their hair back, even though they never want people to see them in that way. I am the one who opens my home, my car, to deeper talks, to be a safe space. The friend who has never asked for anything but the bare minimum (which I still find amazing even though it is common decency to do). A bad person doesn’t ask their selves, what they can do to be better… My sister says those things out of argument because she knows that gets under my skin so that as a sibling, who genuinely has grown up with me, is more understandable than “friends” who never even really got to know me past what I let them know.

I often think, because I as well as others, am aware I have had many connections, and many friendships, yet only a few have made it past a year. I see how that can be terrible, yet I also am one of the few people I know who still have great childhood friends ten or more years later. The ones who were there when we didn’t even know everything life could be when the most important part of our day was recess and playing tag on the playground. I disconnect the second I feel disrespected, yet for some reason, my whole life, I have always been the one to stay, honestly, even overstay my welcome, even though I am the first to trust my intuition and I still stick around. Going back, I guess that’s because I never have wanted anyone to feel like they were not enough, that they were easy to abandon. Something that always played a big role in my life, something that made me, me.

You know, for a long time, my favorite part about myself was how much I cared, how much I can take, how big of a heart I have to see the good in people and things no matter how shitty it makes me feel. People, I thought I could confide in, honestly people I just wanted to just be there for me to listen, not give me advice, were always the ones to destroy this liking for myself. I’m starting to dislike the one thing I loved about myself because I allowed people to get to know me, to change my mind of thinking they’d be the one to stay because I allowed myself to open up. At the end of the day, yeah, this is going to sound selfish, but it is my life. I cannot allow people to hurt me. Although feeling is good, and my psychology self is saying feeling is the best part of being human, but I am exhausted of feeling for everyone else’s reactions to me being real. I am exhausted and disappointed in the way I have been taken for granted. I literally go to therapy not for me anymore, I worked though what I went through, my trauma, at this point I’m going to therapy because of the people who just simply will not go to therapy. (WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME ANYONE GENUINELY ASKED IF I WAS OKAY.)

 Now, almost twenty-one, I guess I’m starting to realize that staying is holding me back. I’ve always felt my life was meant for greater than a small Wisconsin city, there is so much to see, so much to explore, so much to love, yet I am stuck here, even moving towns, I still feel that this was not what or where I was made for. I am stuck in a town where people don’t want to leave, where people want to stay in constant drama because there’s nothing better to do, where honestly, I understand why people here become like their parents. Stuck. Ironic, isn’t it, that the one who was left, is in a constant state of wanting to leave. Maybe that’s why I’m ok with things leaving me, I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve gotten used to finding the best in what’s yet to come. My family, all over the world, living their dreams, living their lives, outside of where we all started from, a third-world country immigrated to a small town in Wisconsin. We will always have roots here, but I’m beyond grateful to have a family that supports their children to get away from this place. The only people who stay, consistently stay, yet who has diversified for our overall benefit is my family and my childhood friends. Spread through the country, yet the ones who choose to stay even though they’re thousands of miles away. though a lot has happened in the past that still affects me to this day, this is what I know. You grow once you accept that nothing can stay. I learn that day by day, because again, so much baggage, I like the comfort, yet I also know that being uncomfortable is the first step of living for me.

I feel like a life is like Jenga, taken apart, falling down, getting put back together to rise. A constant game of life. Things get taken from you, or you pull the blocks away, growing to new heights, often someone or even yourself breaks you, makes you fall, but the good thing is, you can always build yourself back up, even with missing pieces. I guess my tower just fell, missing some pieces, but yet again, I’m going to pick myself up and start again.