Import from Spark People 2/8/2009

I can't even find the word that describes how I feel at this moment. I suppose if I were to narrow it down it would be between grief, guilt, frustration, fear and unhappiness. I'm at a crossroads in my life, everything is vying for my attention and I don't know if I can cope.

I hate my job (or more the people at my job) and I don't want to go there tomorrow night. The fact that it is a night shift doesn't help and that is ironic given that I had to fight long and hard for equal consideration on nights, and I upset a lot of people in the process. The job situation isn't a new thing but it doesn't help. I suppose I should be grateful that because it's nursing, I only have to be there for three days a week. However, when I am at home, I can't stop thinking about the place. I am paranoid, to a certain extent, but if I were to share the story with you, I think you'd understand.

I just wish I could get my act into gear on my days off. I am tired of being lazy and unmotivated. I should have got up on Friday morning and attempted the first session of the Couch to 5K program, but I didn't. The long and the short of it is that I'd spent the early hours of the morning on the iPhone watching YouTube videos and that I didn't feel like getting up at 5am to go running. However, when I woke up (at 11am) I felt so angry at myself. I wanted to do the C25K, I wanted to make a start and to feel that for once I was doing something worthy. Plus I didn't feel like the day was mine. I don't know, I like to feel unrestricted on my days off. On Fridays, the Mothership finishes work early and we club together to finish the housework. Later, the boyfriend comes over. These set events make me feel like my life is not my own. I don't feel like I can do my own thing around people, especially my boyfriend. God bless him, he is a clingy fella, loving cuddles and always wanting me massage his head etc. I feel like I couldn't go upstairs and perhaps start filing my paperwork or just doing something for me, not around him. He'd be there, and I hate doing personal things in front of him. It doesn't matter than we're engaged and about to move into our own place, I like to have a bit of privacy. We usually spend the night sat on the couch, watching whatever my mother dictates we should watch. It's a sorry state of affairs and it is about to change in some ways but I'm not overly enthusiastic about the impending change.

I am about 6 weeks off moving into my own house and I have all the emotional upheaval of that. Stuart is so keen, I am less than keen and my mother is half on the fence in that she wants to see me settled but as she puts it, "will miss every hair on my head". That makes me so upset, I'm almost filling up now as I write this. I know that it is a natural progression for me and Stuart and that 23 is a good time to leave home. However, this is my home. Bottom line, I don't want to be separated from my mother. I don't know whether we're closer than the average mother and daughter or whether my job makes me more appreciative of my parents. I just know that I could stay here forever, paying my rent, doing the chores...I don't know why I like it here so much. Perhaps it'll just be that with the pressures of modern living I won't see her as much. I think that is my fear. I hope that I'll pick up the phone often, pop over with ingredients for a meal and still spend a good portion of my time there. However, with the boyfriend as well, I don't think it'll happen as much as I'd like. He will be my priority and I don't know if I can deal with that.

The other big thing stressing me out is college/medical school applications. The deadline for med school apps is fast approaching. My results, out next week, will show me up as a flagrant failure and in spite of that, I still need to study hard for 2 As, get into a decent school and raise enough money to support myself through five years of education, all while working full-time and running a house. It's not like medicine isn't what I want to do. Suggest a career other than medicine to me and I can't see it. I can't see myself doing anything else. I want it, I really do but I just don't know if my track history will get me there. And that is my constant worry: that I won't get it, that I'll have to delay for yet another year and that I'll end up stuck in that sorry excuse for a job forever and a day.

On top of all this, I am sick and tired of my own body. I want to be a skinny, athletic type with a great resting heart rate and amazing lung capacity and I really want to be working on it now. I know that in the midst of all of the above, weight loss and exercise should be the last things on my mind but I still think that I should be able to do it. I want to feel better about myself, probably because my lack of personal successes could at least be reflected in outward success if and when I fail.

Right about here I would normally talk about moving forward but I just can't. I can't see myself getting out of bed in the morning and tackling anything: ordering prospectuses, organising my finances or looking at my college books. I am in a rut, hemmed in by my track record and by other people. If I succeed tomorrow, I will fail the next day. I always have, and I probably always will.