Burnt

The sun fills me with anxiety.

Every year, around this time, we get a few sunny days that remind us that there's something out there other than gloom and cold. Of course, this is the weather I grew up with... SoCal, drought, blah blah all that crap I always talk about. So it's this weird sense of being a child again.

The sun is nice and all, except for my tendency to crisp up like a human slab of bacon. My problem is that it forces me to think about so many fucking things. Where I've come, what I've done. How am I different from that little kid running around North Long Beach, thrilled with her giant as fuck cassette Walkman?

I'm not.

My anxieties are different these days... dissertations, writing, money, other seemingly 'grown up' things. But the base of it is the same. How will I know if I'm actually happy?

Maybe that links back to all my brain fuzziness, the chemical imbalances, the abuse I've ladled on top of those. Or maybe, just maybe, that's fundamentally me. Maybe I'm just an unhappy person.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy myself, or like my life. I just always want... more. Better. The Best. It pushes me forward in ways others don't seem to be pushed. What I have isn't ever good enough, so I'm always fighting for more. That's behind my drive to get a fucking PhD for, really, no reason other than that I want one.

But it also causes these moments, where I can feel my skin burning, and want to run away from everything because nothing is good enough yet. Because I'm not good enough. These are the moments, sitting in the late Spring sun, that I become destructive.

Spring is the time for rebirth, according to all those legends. I'm sure we've all seen some Joseph Campbell shit about it. Late spring is my time. It's the time where I cast off coats, and reassess. It's the time where I tell the world to fuck off and make way for me.

It's a time of false bravado. It's a time of utter, crippling fear. I don't like change. It scares me more than most things. But... here it is. It's sunny and I'm thinking of ways to make it better. Ways to push things forward. Ways to be the fucking best.