Frustrated Thoughts

I feel stuck in my workspace. I sit at a card table that shakes every time I move. At first, I was enchanted with the card table because I liked that it had belonged to my great-grandmother and was now serving a purpose in my own life, a great-granddaughter that she never met. But now, months later, I no longer find it as charming. I am interested in the continuation of a family history, sure, but I am tired of not having a workspace that feels like my own. I pack up my card table at the end of every day and try to turn my room back into a space that feels relaxing. Which it does not. My room does not feel like much of a haven because it’s strewn with papers and books and the things that I couldn’t fit into my tiny closet that I have now attempted to shove under my bed. I trip on them sometimes as I pass by. I think that I thought that perhaps I would arrive in this new city and suddenly have a home that felt like I had lived there for ages and was always, always neat and tidy. I find myself feeling that ugly envy when I see the homes of friends who live in other cities. I feel like a girl playing pretend in an apartment that does not really feel like mine.

And yet, what am I upset about. Truly, what is there that I can reasonably be upset about right now. I have an apartment that gets beautiful natural light in my bedroom. I have a bookshelf that houses all of the books that I have read and loved and those that I plan to read and hope to love. I have the ability to pay my rent and buy myself groceries and the things that I need and even the things that I don’t need but make me smile without the fear of not being able to pay my bills. I have a family who loves me. I am in love. I am loved. I know that I am not the only one who feels these frustrations, how awful to be alone in a feeling, but the community that I would normally create for myself within my work remains remote. Where would I be without the brightness of my family and of my partner? How do the people who have neither of these sources of warmth in their lives take care of themselves right now?

This is not a flattering portrayal of my inner-thoughts. I have a darkness, or maybe just a shadow, in me that I am not proud of, but is a part of me nonetheless. In the past, I have been tempted, maybe even motivated, to try to hide the parts of myself that I am not keen on both from myself and from others. It is not so much that I am now embracing the ugly and the sad in me as feelings that are inherent definitions of myself, but I have learned that ignoring them gives them more power than they ought to have. If I continue to ignore them and push them into the pit in my stomach, they will not die in the bright, cold, winter light of my bedroom. I am learning that it is okay to feel things that I am not proud of. What truly matters is how I move forward from and out of them and into the January days that have already begun to grow longer with a softness that I find kindness for my mind in.