Order. Control. And other illusions.

My mind has been in a chaotic state lately.

Don't worry, I am not cracking up, I have just been so busy that I started to cherish every ounce of free time available. 

I remember clearly what a friend of mine told me many years ago when my mom was heavily criticizing me for not tidying up my room. "A tidy room is a reflection of a chaotic mind."

Other then using this quote as a defense guard against the attacks of all the invaders of my creative chaos (aka mom and dad), I never really thought it was true. I was lazy to put everything on its place and honestly, whenever I had free time, I felt like it is so much better to use it on something more productive, like reading, painting, playing basketball, going out etc. That was pretty much it. 

However, this morning I woke up and felt completely overwhelmed by all of those things written down in my schedule for today. And suddenly, I felt like cleaning my room. It was chaotic. Just like my mind was. So, I started with making the bed, putting clothes back in the closets, stashing books which were on a pile on the chair, back in the drawers where they actually belong... 

Suddenly, what used to feel like nuisance felt like a sedative.

When I was finally done, I sat and wondered: What was it in cleaning that made me feel so at ease? I stared at my perfectly clean room ....And then .....it hit me- what I have been craving for days now is nothing else but- control... A feeling that something I am doing is completely under my control. Dependent upon my will. That I was the one pulling the strings.

  Right, control, that's it!

Everything I had planned for today threatened to come with a certain level of uncertainty that it would be unsuccessfully finished, if finished at all. The undefined outcome of what I needed to do today still wasn't changing the fact that things need to be done. And doing something without a clear idea whether it will succeed or not for me was tough to handle. There were too many things that I had out of my control. So what I needed is - control.

That made me think about OCD, a disorder we hear so much about as future psychologists. I remembered that compulsive behaviour that they manifest is also a way to keep things in order. To control. To be in control. If you insist on putting a fork exactly 2 cm away from a plate, it's not like fork is going to stand and oppose to being treated so rigidly. :) So- the whole thing is about control.

Apparently, it is not just those with OCD that have a problem with control.

We run towards certainty in our own individual ways. Someone tides the room, someone jogs, someone draws, someone smokes, someone works. Someone writes blog posts. Someone studies, someone slacks persistently. And we all try to demonstrate to ourselves how IT IS POSSIBLE to have something under control. Consciously or unconsciously.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Funny is how hard it is for us to float in instability.

One of the basic things we have learned in Developmental Psych course is that humans are born with just  two basic fears: with a fear of loud noises and a fear of falling. Since the day we are born, we crave to be with both feet on the ground. Physically, but symbolically as well. We need a support from beneath. Something firm enough to stick on, stick to, something that keeps us from falling and getting injured. We crave to posses something that ensures our stability.
Of course, such thing is unattainable in life.

However, there are two things we can do: 

1. we can create illusions of order and control, and 
2. we can let our perception be fooled by them.

After all.... Illusion is the first of all pleasures. :)

Stepping into the unknown

If we were to imagine a Break-up as a homicide of something that is (or could be/ could have been) love, I reckon that among the suspects on the list we could find Jealousy, Betrayal, Misunderstandings, Character Difference ... However, if that list was mine, in almost all of the cases, the main suspect would be my construct of a Fairy Tale vs. No relationship at all. 
Like in Jessie J's song, "when I am nervous, I have this thing, I talk too much...", I say all different kinds of  things that scare people away, although my only goal in those conversations I so obsessively insist on, is to be honest, to communicate, to be open and to clarify to myself what other person is thinking in order to prevent further misunderstandings. It surprises me repeatedly  how I, in so many occasions, despite being a future psychologist who talks so much about problems of emotional stability and about being mature enough to endure the difficulties and struggles, go back on my own words and act like a 15-year-old. I don't articulate my thoughts properly, I burst into tears whenever I stumble upon something that might be hard to say. And then I go excusing myself for being emotional, which makes me even more vulnerable. And then I just look plain stupid and childish. I can teach and preach about assertive behavior for hours if you need me to, I can demonstrate it perfectly anytime... except when I really need to be assertive and communicate without ...you know, losing it. :)

But, I am who I am. Goofy and silly. Overly emotional. Many times hurt. With bunch of bruises which you might not see.
Previous relationships affect us, no matter how much we tend to forget about them. They make us more or less tolerant, more prone to reacting negatively, more open or more introverted... they affect us on multiple basis. 

Being a future psychologist isn't helpful. Quite the opposite. We are often pulled into a trap of interpreting what is not even symbolical. We attach meanings to what is meaningless. And then we look like psychos. :) But what I have learned is that it is important to step up and fight for your own feelings. I have learned the tough way that you need to sometimes put yourself first and say what's bothering you before exhausting all of your energy supply. Having experience isn't helpful either. Nobody should endure the consequences of our previous mistakes. We should train ourselves to treat each person with which we are in a relationship as if we were in a relationship for the first time ever. Like we are falling in love for the first time ever. Like we have never been hurt before. We should train ourselves to approach to that person with undivided attention. We should enter every relationship all patched up and healed. That's how it should be.

Getting into a new relationship means giving yourself a permission to feel again. 

I wish there was some kind of insurance policy when stepping into the strange jungle of what might become love. I wish we could go surfing in the unknown, just enjoying the waves, the breeze, the sun, the thrill, without worrying whether some big evil shark will suddenly show itself beneath us... But all I can do is wish, because the whole point of being able to step bravely into the unfamiliar is to accept the fact that being scared is okay, that being vulnerable is okay... That putting your guard down is okay.
We just need to be emotionally mature to know when is the time to do it.
You'll never know what will happen next. Don't be afraid to step into the unknown.

 No regrets. 

No instructions. Just love.

Blame it all on capitalism. 

It has managed to interfere in one sphere of human relationships that I believed it could never interfere. It has transformed the concept of love.

We choose a prospective candidate on the market, we sign the relationship contract and pay a certain arbitrarily set price for it. What do we get from it? An unfinished product that requires a lot of care. And, of course, as every other product it has an expiration date. It is either used up too quickly, or is too fragile that it breaks quickly. To rationalize the fact that we are paying for that kind of uncertainty, we cautiously handle the situation. Professionally, with little or no emotion. 

Relationships nowadays require a manual. Instructions with all of the DOs and DON'Ts. Instructions saying what you are supposed and what you are not supposed to do.

You are not supposed to call him more than once daily. Do not express your emotions.

Do not show jealousy at any cost, he'll think you're a psycho.  Do not call him before he texts you in the morning. " I miss you" notes are strictly forbidden. Keep him at unease. Make sure that he never knows what you are about to do next. Stay untouchable. 

...

I guess playing love games just isn't my thing. It is not that I am not able to play them. Anybody can play them. However, if I start playing them, they just become GAMES with no LOVE. Should we lose love at the cost of playing the game?

Who are we playing for? Who are we playing against?

By playing games, have we managed to lose LOVE? Or have we transformed into something that I no longer recognize as love?  In basketball, many of my coaches insisted on defense as a crucial instance of our game. If love is a game, like basketball, does that mean that our guard needs to always be on set? Love used to be one sphere for me in which I can be vulnerable. In the time when fragility and sensitiveness are not to be used in relationships, when can we let our guards down? When will the constant game one-on-one be over? 

Does dropping the ball end the game or a relationship? 

I find this crap exhausting. Unbearable. As I have said, games aren't really my thing.

Call me silly but I will stick to the construct of love that I already have. 

Unconditional, breathtakingly intense, creatively silly, unbelievably inspiring, authentically beautiful...

I am not giving up on it. Neither should you.

Write your own story. With no manuals. With your heart.

The ones we want to remember us

Birthdays. One's reminder that time does pass indeed, even if we somehow try to sustain its passing.

I am always excited for mine, because I love seeing how many different people, dear and kind to me, remember that date and try to make it special for me. I love reading the inspiring sentences they have put together to express their sincere wishes for what will await for me in the future. 

However, on each birthday, there are a few people (or maybe even just one) whose names you desperately want to see on your laptop screen or your cell phone display. A few days before your birthday you sometimes even create a whole imaginative version of how the one who you've been so passionately desiring, awaiting, craving for, comes back into your life by preparing something breathtakingly romantic for your special day, letting you know how dear you are to his heart. Of course, if those people forget about your special day, despite hundreds of "happy b-day" notes, it seems like nobody has even remembered. 

Memories are tricky. In those moments when we feel fragile, they drag us into their cage and display all of the nice, funny, sad, romantic etc. videos and make you burst into pieces every time. They are vicious. "People change. Memories don't." In that  very sentence is hidden the destructive power of memories. 

I promised myself to delete certain messages right after my birthday, as a personal boycott to my own feelings... As absurd as that sounds. Funny how, when it comes to emotions, we regress to thinking that the erasing the concrete means also erasing the abstract. It is as if, by erasing the messages, I can erase the memory of the one who typed them. 

The trouble is that I feel like I can't, because now when there is no physical presence of him, losing the metaphorical is unbearable. One of the brilliant Serbian poets noticed how women after relationships become like fetishists; they persistently collect every single detail that reminds them of their loved one and stick to them like to the most precious things in their life.

The object of our desires exists firstly in our fantasies. When we catch up to the reality and have our hypothesis overruled by "objective" life struggles, I believe that we still use that imaginative aspect to make up to our heart for all the pain that we endure. We imagine, we dream, we create our own little story apart from the reality as a hide-out in case this hack of a life causes us more pain. I am not referring to the world of potential paranoid. I am talking about the magic of our imagination. At least about those of us who never stop using it.

I admit it- I overuse it. That's why my friends often accuse me of acting childish. 

Well, this birthday, I deleted all of the messages. I made myself delete them. 

I decided to move on. To find something new. To embrace the fact that people change and to fully accept the chance that I can change as well. 

Don't let anyone ruin your special day. Ever.

For all the romantic fools

Yes. Everybody has that certain someone who knows how to triggers the deepest feelings of both happiness and sorrow. No matter how long it has passed, or how short you have been separated....no matter how many miles are between you or how often you get to see each other, that one person never ceases to be the "special someone". There is always that someone who wakes up your butterflies when he smiles. Just like that, for no special reason.

Well, I am writing this post because I am kind of sick of that feeling and I need to erase it somehow.

Here is why.

I am a helpless romantic who believes that the impossible can have it's prefix removed. :) I believe that believing is the key itself. So what I am trying to say is that - I am in a constant quest for love.

If you wish to fight, fights will come to you unquestionably more often than to those people who stay in the corner and keep quiet, right? Logically, yes.

So what happens? I bump into the wrong ones all the time. Now, it would be a problem if I knew that they are the wrong ones from the very start (or if I at least started off cautiously) , the problem is- I start with a conviction that "this could be it". And, (since I am here writing about this, quite obviously -> ) I make a complete fool out of myself. Even worse, I get heartbroken and I get hurt badly. 

I believe in words like "forever", "true love", "unbreakable bonds" and I don't say those words unless I really mean them. However, many say those words without actually realizing what they are saying. So the truth ends up to be that once you stop being with  that someone (who seems that has quite casually dropped those words because he felt bored :/ ), in most cases he forgets about you. The fact that you are still rigidly holding to the past and to the lost words and promises, is just plain stupid.

If he was that special someone, if he is that special someone- he wouldn't have let you go without fighting for you. You would have been that special someone for him as well. You wouldn't have stopped being special for him. Ever.

Some people can easily be replaced. That is something I need to start believing in. Because I believe that each and every person is one and only one, unique and irreplaceable. Every person leaves traces that are not  erasable. And it hurts to keep believing in that.

I remember when a good friend of mine told me that believing in one, true, eternal love is like believing in Santa. True, I don't believe in Santa. But I believe in fairy tales. (That is similar to believing in Santa, right?) And I am not ready to give up on them. And I am not ready to give up on love. I will NEVER be.

But,

if you are reading this,

and you too have been hurt so many times,

just try to hold back your feelings a bit more.

That's what I am promising myself to do.

Save your feelings for those who really deserve it. Find a princess you are within and find someone who will treat you like a princess. And then, treat that one like a prince. Because he'll deserve it.

Finding the kid you are within

I remember being determined to write regularly. However, I stumble often on my way to keeping my own promise because no matter what I say, somehow, something more important than writing always comes up.

I had a wonderful summer, for instance.

This much needed summer was like, everything else beautiful in life- quite fleeting. Nevertheless, I remember that I really forgot to whine over how fast it is passing, or how many things I will have to wrap up once I am back home. I just let myself go with a flow. I guess that is why it was so beautiful. I was 100% me with a chance of becoming even a happier person. :)

this is how I felt this summer :)

I bought this bookmark at the beginning of s this ummer, on which there is a quote "Growing OLD is inevitable. Growing UP is optional." That quote being my motto, I decided to find enough time to be a goof. And I did :)

So- what I realized is - we just do not have enough time to be kids. And when we do get time to be kids, we still sometimes decide to act like grown-ups. I was privileged to spend my summer vacation in Greece with a person who lets me be myself to the fullest extent- with a person who accepts me for who I am. It is difficult to find a person like that, because it seems to me that people are always burdened with what they think is right or wrong, that they can not easily accept the differences and enjoy somebody being different from them.

Remember the time when we thought everything was possible? A grown-up will make up thousands of reasons why something cannot be done. A kid will give you just as many reasons how to do it. Surely, many would now say- but the grown-up is right- He knows much more and can objectively evaluate possibilities therefore giving the right conclusion. Chances of becoming an astronaut are minimal. But the point is- a kid will believe that becoming something against the odds is possible.

As I was staring at the sea, sipping out my cold frappe and thinking about how nostalgic I am about the period when I was just a kid, I remembered my dear teacher who told me once that the only reasons we crave so much to return to the childhood is the fact that it is over and that the time is irreversible.
However, the remains of that careless period of our lives are still inside of us. We just have to be great psycho-archaeologists to find them. Unlike fossils, those remains can be revived.
We are inevitably pressured by various obligations on daily basis. We are forced to think like computers, carefully planning our steps if we want to ensure our economical stability, our financial independence. But I don't think that losing the kid you are inside is worth it.
Maybe this blog post of mine is crappy if you have been unfortunate when you were a kid. If you have been misunderstood, if you have suffered and were pressured... Adulthood was then something that you have been expecting joyously . But even if it is so, you cannot deny that the kid you were believed that things can always be better and that the happiness lies somewhere close, waiting to be reached.

“Schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It's accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.” - Stephen King

That positive, crazy thinking is what we often miss. I have heard countless times that it is better to start with a pessimistic attitude, because if you fail, you will be OK- you have expected to fail afterall, right?
I keep passing these tips on how to be positive, how to wake up the kid you are inside- that creative little child who never gives up on his dreams, but the truth is that even I find myself many times hushing him up, telling him to stay quiet because this is a grown-up world.

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Don't underestimate people who despite their intelligence, many virtues, admiring academical skills know how to goof off, how to burst out laughing, make fools of themselves etc. They are not like that despite that, but in Addition to that.

“Children see magic because they look for it.”- Christopher Moore

Always look for the magic, and you'll always end up seeing it. Enjoy life.

Processing the sadness

This is one of those nights when you can feel the tiredness invading your whole body and yet, there is no chance that you can fall asleep. Herman Hesse, one of my favorite writers says that nights like this one should be cherished. One who has never spent a night awake in thoughts, filled up with sweet sorrow, has never truly felt anything deep enough. 

In my attempt to cherish this night without letting my spirit crush and bursting into tears (because my defense mechanisms depart to some other unknown place after 1 am) I figured out that the most constructive thing would be to write a new post.

I bet you have had nights like this one too. I decided to write because I "accidentally" bump into the saddest songs on YouTube or end up choking from sadness while reading lines of  some book I'm reading. I am trying to process all of the sad emotions and guide them safely to the exit. Life is to short to be sad, right?

A great friend of mine told me not to run way from my emotions. She told me to feel free to express them. I somehow find it easier to put them aside and do some other things, such as planning projects, studying Greek, playing basketball...anything. Just not that one scary thing that needs to be done: introspection. 

For me- the very process of expressing them is hurtful beyond the imaginable extent.

This is one of those blog posts with no precise topic or function. I cannot even say that it is an attempt to create something original, artistic...Catharsis. Nothing more. But as it is the case with every other sort of cleaning, in this way too, I can't run away from the fact that the dust keeps falling again and again... Cleaning should be a repetitive process. And I never really liked cleaning. I do not like to process. I like to get over and move on.

Robert Frost says : "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

It truly does. The question is, how does it go on? Are there things that we can never ever get over? I am not trying to be pathetic.. I am just wondering. This is not the first time I had such nights...Of course I  had nights like this before... And I reminiscence being even much sadder and thinking how I was never going to find a way to be better, but somehow it turned out to be completely different. Universe has its own crazy ways. I read somewhere recently that we need to get used to not finding signs on life's most important crossroads. Everything will come to its place in due time. I just need to convince myself that I really believe in that. 

There are so many things left unsaid. 

So many things left undone. 

So many moments unfulfilled. 

So many places left unseen. 

So much of us left behind. 

And so much of us lost in fear.

Anticipation. I wish we all had a permanent prospective memory disorder and that we were programmed to think only about the moments happening now. I wish we couldn't anticipate the future. 

We wouldn't run away. We wouldn't let the fear interfere.

There are some things I can't change. I gotta learn to let go.

Sometimes one just needs to accept being sad as a healthy thing and let the time do its own thing. 

Process the sadness.