I Feel Like a Fraud.
Hello!
Now I'm aware that my blog has been a bit doom and gloomy this past month and for that, I'm sorry. Unfortunately you're going to have to put up with a bit more doom and gloom as my blog is the one place I feel like I can take off my "Sarah faces the world with a smile on her face" mask and actually talk about what's going on in my head.
I'm writing this having just come home. I had two hours of social theory this morning, followed by lunch, then another hour of class. I spoke to friends, got through the niceties of "I'm good, my weekend was fine, eurgh, I know, I'm struggling with that essay too!" and I smiled, and asked how people were, and cooed over the shopping they'd done at the weekend. Then I got into my bedroom and just burst into tears. And I can't bear the thought of answering the question "how are you? How was your day?" Because for all intents and purposes, my day was fine but for me, I feel like I'm wading through treacle.
See, I'm not very good at this whole grief thing. I like the fact that I can be friendly, warm, and smiling with my friends. I like that they see me as chirpy and I'd like to remain chirpy as I make new friends. But now I feel like a fraud because if I'm 100% truthful, I feel fucking awful. I'm not sleeping particularly well, I feel bloated, my thighs feel 1000x bigger than they are, and coping with the loss of two family members is a hell of a lot harder than I anticipated it being. And I feel so angry. I feel angry because I couldn't control this. I feel angry because I thought I could just carry on as if nothing had happened. And I feel angry for lying. But at the same time, I want to keep lying because I'm terrified that people won't want to be friends with me because I'm feeling down. And before you say that's a ridiculous thing to think, I went through that before. I had a shitty time with anxiety last winter and then someone I thought was a close friend told me they didn't want anything more to do with me anymore via text. And all I'd done was be a less shiny version of myself. And I see that person multiple times a week and I see it as a reminder to be that shiny version of myself. And that's stupid because they're not my friend anymore, and I know my true friends would never do that to me but I've kind of had enough of people leaving for now.
But the funny thing is, I don't want people to treat me any differently, and sometimes I relish the fact that people have no idea of what's going on. For example, I photographed our halloween party the day after my grandmother died and felt proud that those photographs were beautiful, and that no-one could tell that I didn't feel in the least like partying.
So it's confusing. But I think that I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for being bad at this whole grief thing. And I'm sorry for bottling everything up and then vomiting it all out in a blog post.
One thing I can say though is that there have been some positives to come out of all of this and I will be writing about them and taking some shiny pictures with my new camera (that I can finally show off about on here because the pictures are going to be SO much better) so do look forward to that.
Thank you for making me feel like there's always someone listening.
Lots of Love,
Sarah xxx
