Liljumper’s Adventures

I have recently noticed a trend to need to be occupied. I noticed the other day that I had where I needed to be occupied.

Even when I’m alone, I’m thinking or talking to myself, somewhere where I’m always busy. The space alone, the silence in my head, scared me.

It was a reminder that I was alone with my time and with myself. So I filled it with videos, hobbies, things so I didn’t have to confront my alone time, my isolation.

But I’ve been trying to actively fight against that urge, that urge to always be doing something, to be constantly occupied. It’s alright for there to be quiet time, reflection, and just silence in my mind. It’s pretty hard to figure out how to do that, to quiet the inner voices that have kept me company.

But it’s something I need to do. I want to find that silence, to be present in the moment, without my inner voices intruding, making themselves known.

It used to scare me, but now it’s what I’m longing for. I want to be able to meditate, and quiet my thoughts. It’s something I’m chasing, this inner solitude. I want to feel at peace with myself, with my life. To be able to just pause, not have to be running, or at movement.

It’s something that is scary, and quite difficult, but it’s like exercise for the brain. It’s something that requires daily work, and mindfullness.

It’s something I’m not good at right now, but something I want to be better at.

I have recently met some friends who have described to me what overly sensitive people are like. It happened on my recent trip to England that there was someone who had upset someone else and she thought that they were being overly sensitive. I was friends with both, so I got to hear the perspectives of two people, which were both fairly accurate which was nice, not a he said she said.

But it began me to think if I was overly sensitive. Because I accurately fit that description. I do think I tend to over think things and take things personally and am a sensitive person.

If I think someone’s angry at me I can’t sleep, it takes me a couple days to process things and some moments where I felt I had maybe insulted someone haunt me days after. I think why would I have done that.

And I do get upset about a lot of things, things matter to me. It matters to me to have the house clean, or to be accepted, understood. And things mean more to me, a comment can mean different things and point to other thoughts that weren’t voiced.

So I definitely agree that I am a sensitive person. But overly?

My friend and I were talking and she thinks that there is no overly sensitive, only degrees of sensitivity and people need to be conscious of that.

I agree, because it’s pretty hard to quantify or define overly sensitive, it’s pretty subjective. And so, for that reason, I don’t know if anyone is overly sensitive. There is sensitive and fluidity of that category, but I don’t think there is a hard or fast line that says when someone is overly, or too much.

I think we also live in a culture that discourages types of sensitivity, although this is a tangent (somewhat). It’s a culture that bombards us with images and really makes us less sensitive, to images of war, violence. People lose their sensitivity. They don’t become heartless monsters, but they become hardened to it. And maybe some people never get over it.

I am also very aware of the different ramifications my sensitivity has for my gender, how I need to act to be respected and get my point across, only for it to be misunderstood again. Even when arguing, because all my emotions can come out at once, I need time to process, to figure out how I feel and decide how to act, if I want to act, at all on them. But more on that later.

Bottom line, I agree. I do think there isn’t overly sensitive, there is just varying degrees that other people need to be aware of.

It doesn’t make sense for someone to arbitrarily draw a line in the sand and say after this point, it’s excessive and shouldn’t be treated seriously. It’s certainly not something to be shamed. And it’s something that can’t really be defined at all. It’s not so crazy of a concept, there’s just varying degrees of things, personality traits, ethnicity, preferences, etc.

Having dealt with that person who was labeled as such, I don’t think they were overly sensitive. And to be clear, this isn’t about sensitive people, it’s about the label, ‘over sensitive’.

Everyone obviously is entitled to their own opinion, but I don’t think I am overly sensitive, definitely sensitive. And to be fair, no one has called me overly sensitive. It’s just something that’s been in my mind since England.

It’s like a spectrum of the rainbow, to everyone the line between red and orange could be different. It’s just a line that is hard to draw, for anyone, and it’s a very personal line/distinction.

I’ve been reading this memoir by Felicia Day, her memoir actually and a lot of it has been really resonating with me. One of the primary things a belief, earlier in her life, that the opposite of success was failure. And many other things like her academic determination, her weirdness, etc. I believe she’s my spirit animal, if people could do that. Either way I identify a lot with her.

And this earlier belief she had, is one I still have. I know it’s wrong and you can tell me hundreds of time there is no failure, only the failure to try, and I nod my head and it does make sense. But it doesn’t click in me. I believe it’s true and believe it works, but it doesn’t become a belief for me.

In my mind my life has worked like that, failure and success. But not for others, with other people I have a clarity, a sense of mind that is totally not present for me. I believe it when I tell others that there is only the failure to try, but it never rings true for me.

Why? I’m not sure, but I have felt like that. Like there’s only certain modes of success and all others are seen as failures. Certainly in school I felt that way, that the only success was an A and the rest was failure.

Where did this come from and how do I fix it? I wish I knew. I really like things to be right, to be perfect, and this is definitely connected. Where does this come from? Who knows, but it’s here now. How do I fix it?

No clue, maybe I just stare at myself in the mirror and say, you’re not a failure, there are other ways of success, other ways to succeed. Because most days I look at myself and think, what the heck am I doing with my life? Because what life I’m living now, I never thought I would. So to a degree, most days I’m left without a sense of accomplishment or success.

That’s sad, and I write that knowing it. But I’m not sure how to fix it. Maybe to take pride in what I do? What I accomplish? Just because people don’t believe this about me, doesn’t mean I believe it.

I don’t have answers, which inherently to me, feels like somewhat of a failure. That sucks. But how do I rephrase that to make me feel better?

I don’t have answers now.

Doesn’t feel much better, but looks better on paper.

I spend a lot of time alone in Munich and if I’m not physically alone, alone doing my own things in my own space alone. Although, to be fair, I do spend a fair deal of time alone physically as well.

In fact sometimes I end up spending more time of the day talking to myself than anyone else. I’ll chat to myself while I wash dishes, put my makeup on, get ready for school.

But I dislike doing things alone. I can go buy groceries or pick up food or look for something alone, but I generally don’t like to do things alone. I like company. I like to shop with people, I like to eat and talk with people, I do like doing things with people.

People are generally balanced between wanting to do things with others, and having their alone time. But I get a lot of alone time. It’s hard to find people who are passionate about the same things I am. I have school friends, but they all had their own lives before we met and their own jobs and commitments, I do see them, it’s just harder. We are all at different points in our lives with different goals. It’s not like college or high school where we are all in a similar boat.

Maybe doing things alone is like a badge of honor. I know some people say that you need to spend time with yourself alone, that otherwise how will you get to know yourself.

I can see the point that is being made. It is important to have a good sense of self. But I like also to be with people, to have dinner events, to hang out with friends.

Having people around me all the time, and then gone, is strange and disorienting. And it leaves me with a lot of alone time.

Maybe I don’t know how to make friends in the real world. With jobs and careers, but I don’t think, to be fair, my school makes it easy (more so on that later I guess).

But I guess I’m left with a deep sense of being alone. Like if I suddenly didn’t need to be in Munich, nothing really would be keeping me there. I would miss my school friends, but it’s no deep ties that keep me there.

With friends, it feels a bit like cliquey high school, and I’m the new kid trying to have people, who already have cliques, to be friends with me, to break into their group. It’s a hard task, and it requires a lot of work, which I have done, I’ve given out my number to tons of people, I’ve invited people to my home, I’ve written them, but it’s hard and I don’t have a ton to show. I have developed a closer group of friends, to be sure.

Do I feel like they feel the same about me? I don’t know. I somehow get the sense they all have their own close friends, and I don’t know where I land.

And that leaves me with a sense of sadness. I think, with friends, all I really want is a sense my feelings and friendship is reciprocated, like I know where I stand, but I don’t anymore. And the times are a changing.

Closure is something difficult to achieve and when you do, it’s most certainly never what it should have been. It should have felt better, usually.

I wouldn’t really know since I didn’t have any type of closure. I never got to tell anyone off or make someone ‘realize what they did’. So I’m not sure if it would have felt that satisfying, but I don’t think it would.

I’ve grown up a bit, and realized things rarely feel how they should or how they were imagined to be. (Because I’ve never had that experience)

But a while ago I had a dream that gave me a sense of closure.

I dreamed my ex came back and for some reason, I thought I’ll go back to that, how unrealistic, but I kept talking to my current partner (who was my ex at that time) and knowing I still loved him, but for some reason, dried up faith or something, I had to go back and try the old relationship. I did, and it was horrible, I felt so sad and it was bad (he didn’t or hadn’t changed, not surprised) and I finally left. I just got up, no bags and left and went back to Munich and fell asleep next to my partner.

I awoke feeling very confused (as I do with most of my dreams because they are always wacky and totally vivid). But I felt very confident I was where I wanted to be. Dream me had guided me here and I felt like it was a sign.

Because the broken things don’t always fix themselves, and sometimes, when your brain or heart doesn’t know where it wants to or should be, your dream self does.

I just recently rewatched the Miracle movie and it reminded me of the power of believing in something bigger than oneself.

It’s important to have something you can believe in. It’s hard to always believe only in yourself, and I have moments where I don’t believe in myself. But it helps to have something bigger to believe in, a sense of purpose.

I really lost that in the move, I had spent years focusing on a sense of purpose and believing my work made a difference and when I moved, it just disappeared. I didn’t do any activism, I left a community where I felt I had a purpose, and left my friends.

I was totally lost. While I still haven’t necessarily found a purpose yet, I’m working towards rebuilding that sense of self.

It was an essential building block of myself, and it’s quite sad it was gone. I’m not sure how I can bring it back. I wish I had a better plan.

My plan as of now it to find an opportunity where I can participate or volunteer, or feel as if I have a use in that sense. It’ll be hard and as of now I have no idea how to do this, but it will bring it back.

Or maybe after my studies, I find it somewhere else, hopefully with my career, although that is a major can of worms I can’t get into right now.

My point is, everyone needs a sense of being part of something, I think. And that’s what’s so dangerous, when you’re lost you can glom onto something else, some other cause, and it can be the wrong one, but you relish that sense of community and common purpose. I get that feeling. I think I’ve been deeply unhappy at not having that purpose, losing it, and quite lost.

While I’m not there yet, I’m trying.

I recently had a dream where two men in my life, former lovers of mine, were fighting. Which rarely happens, I usually have strange bizarre dreams like paragliding from South Korea to Australia with a tv star as my coach.

So this crazy personal dreams are almost rare. However I do have crazy vivid and wild dreams quite regularly. But in this particular one I had stuck up for this man who had been beaten up and who I loved and was beaten up for being with me and he betrayed me.

It was revealed that he was not who he seemed. While we were dressed up performing magic tricks in front of an audience who threw things at us after….my dreams man.

But it was really hard for me to rationalize after and process. I wanted to make the man who betrayed me the other man in my dreams, who was a childhood friend. I wanted the childhood friend to be the one who had taken such a hit for me and I felt so close to and not the other man. I didn’t want to change who betrayed me, it was still the other man, but I wanted to change the amount of connection and emotional baggage.

I, even awake, didn’t want that man to have betrayed me. It didn’t feel real or right, how could he? Asleep it made perfect sense and I moved on, but when I awoke I wanted to try to rewrite my dream.

Because I couldn’t deal with someone who I had protected, threatened people because they had hurt him, someone who had taken physical blows for me, would betray me. It was inconceivable.

But isn’t that life? The people who hurt us or betray us are people who we don’t expect. And it hurts and cuts more because we trusted them, and it did seem inconceivable.

My rational mind couldn’t deal with something my dream self knew.

So I’ve accepted the truth of my dream now and I’ve treated it as my dream self trying to tell me something I still haven’t accepted.

I don’t think I’m a total cynic. It’s more about being prepared, not thinking that certain ties are eternal. Maybe this does make me a bit of a cynic. And maybe what isn’t wrong is not the tie/bond, but the person.

Maybe it derive off a false sense of personhood, maybe my idea of this person who had sacrificed for me, was wrong. Maybe all along he was going to betray me.

Or maybe people change, and that’s the scary thing? That people can genuinely sacrifice themselves for you, make promises, protect you, but can change after and betray you. It seems real to them, and they can mean both the promising and betraying one equally well because circumstances and people change.

So maybe that’s what my dream self was saying. To accept people’s change? So I’m not exactly sure what this dream means, but I thought I would share.

It’s easy to suspect everyone and never let anyone in, it’s hard to let people in, trust, love freely, and then get burned.

Because it’s not scary to live a life without trust, it’s scary to live a life with trust.

This kind of picks up where the last post ends. I feel like an old person at heart.

I am turning into one of those people, those grumpy people, who look at kids playing in water and scowl when they splash water on me, how rude!

But I don’t go out to party, I prefer drinking in my apartment, a nice sweet wine.

I never had a heavy party phase, I’ve had little blips of mistakes and what not, but they’re pretty small. I never had moments where I did stupid reckless things, except maybe letting my ex drive me in his car (which was entirely stupid might I add), but it’s not like I drove super fast or played chicken in my car (being as I never had my own car). I am nor scorning that lifestyle at all.

I feel if you are being careful with yourself and others, then you do you. I actually have a bit of respect for people who go out till 5 am or dance until they can’t walk anymore, precisely because I can’t do it. I like my couch. I’m a bit of homebody. I like watching movies here. I like making food here. I like…here.

Also Munich is damn expensive. Like it’s pretty crazy.

But some people speak about that time of their life almost like it’s a rite of passage, it’s never the people who are my close friends who know me, but it’s those I run into at parties (when I go). I’m one of those people who, once my makeup is off and my pajamas are on, I am not moving my butt off that couch or outside, unless for groceries.

I don’t have many crazy stories about the things I’ve done. And the ones that are most memorable I have no recollection of.

For a while I felt like there was a part of myself that was missing. The young spirit. The ‘wild’ years where I could have those photos and stories and I could contribute when people measured up their drunk stories.

I felt like I needed to compensate. So when I had the opportunity I tried to play with the big boys and fell flat on my face.

So it’s taken me a lot to be okay with not doing that. To be okay with people scoffing at me when I tell them I won’t and want to go home and sleep, to be okay with people calling me a party pooper. To have to ignore the social stigma or that look when people look at me asking for my story and I just smile.

Because I’ve kind of accepted that it’s just not who I am. Plus I couldn’t even pull off one of those getting to sleep at 5 and waking up later being fine. I can’t do that. That would borderline kill me and make me a monster to deal with. I would be a grumpy sea monster.

I am a total oldie at heart. I don’t mean oldie like a bad thing, so let me rephrase.

A total comfort-homebody-coco-person. I’m about comfort, sleep, and card games (without alcohol).

And that’s beginning to be okay with me.

In Switzerland we didn’t have internet on our phones, but for some reason I carried it around with me everywhere.

It would be easy to reassure myself it’s a manner of comfort. If I needed to I could use it to call for help or what not, except I didn’t even have the number of our friend who was driving us around (which I realized now).

Which made my phone almost useless. Well it could still be used to call an emergency line or what not, but it wouldn’t update my email, I wouldn’t be able to post pictures.

It was just a simple phone.

Yet it felt a bit like a life jacket. And while I could legitimize this by saying I needed it for safety, and to a degree I feel I did, I think there is also something else lurking.

Even while I didn’t need it for it’s uses, it’s totally normal, habit, and safe to carry it around with me.

Imagine how disconnected I would feel without it, or unsafe. And isn’t that a bit strange? It’s just a little box? But when is the last time you have seena pay phone that worked? I rarely even see ones that work, it’s kind of strange, because I remember when there were more. Did they just get sucked up one day? Society has deemed them more or less unnecessary.

So our phones becomes those little lifelines and safety blankets.

I wish I could say that this has inspired me to have days where I walk around without my phone. But it hasn’t. I use it to communicate, to know I can call my parents whenever I want, to play my audiobooks.

I know it’s a safety blanket, that device I can use whenever I don’t want to make eye contact with someone.

I am accepting this semi-crutch, and maybe I can wean myself off it. Do I need it? Meh. Could I live without it? I can say I could. Because I have pretty high faith in myself.

I’m not addicted to it, since I can easily not use it. I use it mostly for communication still, and limit my browsing to my kindle.

But if there was not internet? What would I do? Play a lot of card games, board games, and do some reading.

Which sounds, actually, pretty relaxing.

But then again I’m an oldie at heart. I love talking on the phone, landlines, paper books, and cups of hot coco. Total oldie at heart. And that’s okay with me.

In my trip to Swtizerland I was surrounded by beautiful mountains and it was like I was transported to the Sound of Music. I wanted to climb every mountain and sing from the top….I really like that movie and for some reason it has imprinted on me.

Those views though…Spectacular.

There isn’t much to this post except that it was phenomenal sights. We crossed the San Bernadino pass and when we reached the top and could see around, it was unbelievable.

I felt like I was on the top of the world and everything was below my feet. It was totally otherworldly.

If you have instagram you can check out the posts with the link. It should take you to the page of photos.

Also I fly to the US this week, so that is exciting and keeping me busy.