The Art of Giving Up

"22 is like the worst idea that I've ever had. There's too much pain, it's too much freedom what should I do with this? It's not the way you plan it, but how you make it happen!"

"Encouragement gets old," those are the words that came out of my mouth around 9:50 this morning. Do you want to know why I uttered those pessimistic words? Simply because it's true. If you haven't noticed I'm not in a very encouraging mood today and I honestly haven't been for a while. After Australia, Dubai, and Italy, life came down a lot...more like crashed and burned because fantasy life was over.

I don't want to encourage anyone today, that's what my previous posts are for, instead I want to be honest about how much life sucks and it's more than okay to admit that at times. I've always joked that the title of Paramore's song "For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic" is the best way to describe my personality. I've always been the downer and the "dark" one in the crowd so my recent posts of light shedding is a rare thing. Maybe I was on a vacation high. Maybe something has gotten into me...who knows? All I know now is that twenty two really does feel like the worst idea that I've ever had. 

Life is hard when the high is gone and cloud 9 evaporates into thin air. This is what happened to me in the recent weeks. I knew that life was hard from past experiences but just when it seems to get better, reality hits and it gets worse. Does it ever really get any better or do we just learn how to deal with the pain as time goes by? 

Lately, rejection has been the reason why I feel like I want to give up. I've been getting rejected from almost everything in my life. It's to the point that I'm surprised my dog even still looks at me as a valuable person. Ever get that feeling that you're simply not good enough? Yeah, well, that's been the feeling I've had for a long time. My biggest fear has always been becoming a failure by my own standards and lately my life has been heading in that direction. 

In the beginning, I honestly thought that I would beat the odds but now I'm not so sure. I don't want to be mediocre or average but I'm afraid that's the road I'm driving down. No matter how hard I try it seems like every sign is pointing to the exit that reads "mediocrity". I don't want to live my life struggling to live or make it day by day. I want to be the one who excels and passes by all of the bumps in the road. I want to be special and stand out from the crowd. No matter how much I want to, I can't seem to give up because of my fear of failure. Do you know how exhausting it is to not even be good enough to give up? You may not believe it but giving up is an art.

It takes a lot to give up when you once wanted something so badly. It takes a lot of dedication to never return to the thing you once loved (or still love). First you have to convince yourself that it you don't want it all that much, that it's simply just not worth it. How do you do that when you've only dreamed of success? I never saw myself as anything less than that person I want to be. Then after you convinced yourself, you have to entirely forget about the past you that had a crazy dream that didn't come true. Last, you have to force yourself to become content with your current position in life. In other words, you have to get comfortable where you are in life and it's really hard to get comfortable in a place you don't want to be. I've always heard that it's easy to give up and it's easy to get comfortable but it wasn't until recently that I learned the art of giving up and I'm still not so sure that I'm ready to go there. On the other hand, I don't know how much more rejection I can take.

I had to write on my Twitter page as a reminder to myself that in life you will always hear the word "no" more than "yes" but we must hold on because all we need is one "yes" to get us going. But what happens when you get the feeling that you're just wasting your time and you'll just be another number in the crowd with a story of an old dream that never happened? What do you do when you feel like there's no point in trying for that one "yes". Encouragement gets old and it no longer works. After a while it just sounds like a bunch of cattle manure that those annoying optimist use to hear themselves say something so they can continue feeling important. Like, really, who smiles that much anyway? 

I thought maybe if I wrote something honest that I would feel a lot better. Well, I guess I feel better...just not a lot. The feelings are still there, but the truth is they don't go away that easily. There's not much that anyone can say or do that'll change how I feel. I don't want to be a failure so I continue to keep going but it's getting harder everyday. It's exhausting and discouraging. I keep holding on to hope but I want to let it go because hope makes a fool of us. The only thing left to do is choose. Do I want to be a fool or a failure?