in need of a distraction

You know how sometimes you're listening to a song, and all of a sudden it's like a line or two is almost audibly bolded? It's like your ears pick up on the way you've been feeling and they're like "PAY CLOSER ATTENTION, DUMMY" Was listening to Falling Slowly the other day, and this stuck out: "you have suffered enough, and warred with yourself, it's time that you won"....

Graduation was this weekend. I had an okay time. I think I was kinda weird all day Friday…I knew I was getting an award, and I also had to introduce an award. I can’t even be psyched about the award I got because literally 20 seconds of talking in a mic in front of a group and I get weird. I get really uneasy when I’m the focus of something; I really don’t handle it well when I know people are looking at me.

If I’m being honest, though, I actually am proud of everything I did while I was IN grad school. I did everything I wanted to do that I didn’t in undergrad. I achieved academically, I was involved in leadership in my program, my professors knew me, I studied abroad, I worked my ass off and made some phenomenal friends (I did this in undergrad, at least). The issue is that I hadn’t seen a lot of my fellow students in a while, some of them even since December before I really started eating my feelings and, when it was still sort of okay that I hadn’t found a job yet. But six months and an unmentionable amount of weight gain later, it was kind of hard to look people in the eye. Isn’t that sad? Yep.

I genuinely and thoroughly enjoy my fellow students and wish I could have found a way to enjoy it, but so much of it was about small talk. Small talk is the worst because you can’t be honest – which , for me, means updating everyone on how I’m upset with myself that I gained back ALL the weight I had lost (and maybe more, I don’t know) and look terrible, am completely broke, jobless with no prospects, and still living at home. So, honesty’s out of the picture, and I’ve got nothing else. It is REALLY deflating to have nothing in your life worth talking about, or to feel like you have nothing to talk about.

It just sucks that these times when I should be so proud of myself, are the times when I seem to hate myself the most. I can count on one hand (and have a few fingers left over) the things that make me happy right now; I need a few extra appendages to tally up of all the things and situations coming up that are going to make me feel awful, or more appropriately, that I’m going to let make me feel awful. This should be a really good month for me and I’ve never felt worse.

And not to go all meta on you, but to add to everything above, I know I’m being a complete baby about all this. I hate that all I can write about lately is whiny and self-involved and self-indulgent and all the self-hyphenated words that aren’t the good ones. I’m complaining about things that are in my direct control and an adult would just cowboy up and fix things. And everything I’m complaining about here is just the tip of the iceberg, of a mountain of shit. Mixed topographical metaphors included, I’m kind of disgusted with myself for it. So said disgust piles itself nicely onto the ever-increasing snowball of shame.

Maybe just getting all this out there is the first step in making it all better. I'm sick of dragging myself down, I'm sick of dragging everyone else down. I just need something to distract me. When I’m distracted from myself I’m happy. My friends distract me. A job would distract me. My dog distracts me. Sometimes my parents distract me. Diet coke distracts me (but I don’t think it distracts my tooth enamel, so, not good).

So, um, to give you some form of interaction on this one, what distracts you? The good kind of distractions, of course. Not, like, heroin.