Waking Up On The Wrong Side

I woke up so frustrated this morning. I hate it when that happens - it's not too often, but usually it happens when I'm brought pretty blatantly to the life I'm living. It was the kind of thing where I just don't want to get out of bed, even though my only hope for relieving the frustration is to go do something about it. I got that feeling like I was stuck under the covers - why get out when it's only going to be harder than it's been?

It was a strange feeling to have, I admit, during a break from school and after being with some very good friends the day before. It probably was the combination of the two that did it - being with these friends somehow reminds me that this isn't going to last forever, as I once thought it was. I'm not worried that I'll lose them as friends, but this can't be our lives, living here and being together. Nor do any of us really want it to be, but personally I just see what I had a year ago and feel the overwhelming need to find something to compete with it, something that I can look at and say, "Oh, yeah, this is definitely better than last year." But then I wake up in the morning and look at what I can't have and get overcome by it.

I can think of my happiness on a meter, like a speedometer, only it's happiness levels that increase left to right instead of miles per hour. It's probably a completely inaccurate way to track happiness, but at the moment I can picture it in my head. It seems like I've spent so little time in a stable state at the far right of that meter, while the rest of the time I bounce violently back from one end to the other. I refuse to let myself be happy in this moment, being here, because I know it's temporary and I'll soon have to get back to work - I can't let myself forget that. I'd probably have woken up in a much better mood if I was able to forget that.

Sometimes I get frustrated to the point where I consider how futile my frustration is. Why do I get so worked up about it? Because I care, obviously, but caring to the point of waging internal warfare has to be a sign that I'm overdoing it a little. I can't help but care about all of it - what's here, what's at school, what I have, what I don't have... and yes, I intentionally put those subjects in their respective places between those commas. There are times when I wish I was good at letting go, so that maybe life would be a little easier, but then I jump right back and realize that not letting go is something I do for a reason. This is probably a part of myself I should explore - why do I hold on to things so tightly? Perhaps it's simply just a fear of losing things that matter to me, but I know it's more than that. I know I do it for a reason, and not a bad one either - why does letting go always have to be the right answer? I think I convince myself that I can take the emotional strain of holding onto everything that still matters to me. Sometimes, like this morning, I feel a strong urge to let go of all of it. I then realize that I could never let go, because holding on so tight (even when people are telling me give it up) is how I live my life. I have yet to find enough reason to change this part of myself, and though the lines that are being drawn daily in my life make it harder to bear, I also grow a little better at understanding what's important to me by knowing what I hold on to the most.