Insomnia

I can´t sleep. I have been turning from left to right, from right to left, and back again - a zillion times. I´m just so scared. This month I will find out if I screwed up on my written exams. I will get the results by the end of august. I screwed up last year. There was half a point missing on one of the eight tests we had to write... Now, this is my last chance at earning my degree. It´s not like I want to become a lawyer, so I don´t really need this degree. But I put so much time and effort into it all these years, I struggled so hard, despite nowing that it´s not what I want to do. I stuck with it. It´s more like I´m scared of having a hard time finding a job. Or maybe, no: I´m scared of feeling like a failure. I´m scared, I might believe I´m a failure...

I´mad at me, too. For not knowing what it is that I want to do. For not having enough confidence in my abilities. For not being able to be what I´m not: A career-oriented, confident, successful person. For some years I worked my butt off to become just that. I thought, it was all a matter of pure willpower and determination. Where there´s a will, there is a way. The one thing that came my way was a burnout syndrome. Three years later, it´s still a struggle for me. I´m amazed at that person I have been a few years ago. I have been so into this law thing. I can´t relate to that anymore and boy have I tried! A lot of times, I think that maybe it is too a matter of pure willpower, blah, blah. But it´s not. That is what I know, although I question it over and over again. It´s just so strange, that I changed so much.

In the process of recovering from my miserable state, I took up all those things that I had neglected for years on end. All those things that had made me happy when I was a child and that saved me in my lonelyness as a teenager. Drawing, painting, crafts.

And now this creative part of me is ruling my life. And it´s jealous. It´s acting really wild inside of me, whenever I dare to sit down to study... I become depressed, whenever I spend more than two hours over my books. I´m brimming with ideas - most of which I never express, because I think that I can´t allow myself to do something fun, when I actually have to study! So rather I numb my brain with watching some mindless tv instead, feeling even more like a failure afterwards. I have tried different routines. Studying in the morning, creative stuff in the afternoon, and vice versa. Breaking down my study time into tiny chunks and doing creative stuff inbetween. You name it.

And still I´m having a hard time accepting it. I often think that I just exaggerate. That it´s all in my imagination. That I don´t need to create. That it´s all crap. Because I´m not even good at it. How will I be able to make a living of painting or crafting? Me? I need more time. I have lost so much time all these years that I have been trying to be somebody else.

But then again - you can call me naive - I just know, that I will be able to make a living, even as the person that´s me. I know I can be a lot better, if only I keep on doing what I love doing. I know that I will be a lot better at drawing and painting, than I am now. I have seen how much progress there was in my drawings the last two years - and I didn´t even draw all that much! I know that I´m meant for a creative, arty life ( although I´m scared of saying this). There is a part of me, that knows what it is. "That knows it´s neither ice, nor mud, nor winter light - but wood, with a gift for burning." Thanks Andrea, for helping me remember this.

Song

You´re wondering if I´m lonely:

OK then, yes I´m lonely

as a plane rides lonely and level

on its radio beam, aiming

across the Rockies

for the blue-strung aisles

of an airfield on the ocean

You want to ask, am I lonely?

Well, of course, lonely

as a woman driving across country

day after day, leaving behind

mile after mile

little towns she might have stopped

and lived and died in, lonely

If I´m lonely

it must be the loneliness

of waking first, of breathing

dawn´s first cold breath on the city

of being the one awake

in a house wrapped in sleep.

If I´m lonely

it´s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore

in the last red-light of the year

that knows what it is, that knows it´s neither

ice nor mud nor winter light

but wood, with a gift for burning

Adrienne Rich