So, I've been having several thoughts, lately. The tone of these thoughts are likely going to be better understood if other things about me are understood first. And so, with that in mind...
I used to be a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka "The Mormons" - so called because their primary source of study/gospel doctrine is found in The Book of Mormon). I still struggle with being outside of that community. It was easier living in an area full of Mormons, because it was easy to find post-Mormon communities, too. I had several friends who were kind and understanding about the kind of sadness one can feel about losing hold on beliefs.
While I enjoy the idea of living somewhere that hosts many varied beliefs, I have a difficult time finding any kind of a niche in such a place. I've always struggled socially. And I've always been a little bit sad about the fact that I struggle socially. I am not one of those charismatic humans with animal magnetism who draws others to her effortlessly (though, as luck would have it, I'm married to an extrovert who people are drawn to, so thankfully we still have friends in our lives).
But as it is... On days off, I tend to stay huddled indoors, reading or staring at my phone (sometimes for hours) flitting through social media sites and reading random articles... I don't seek out real social situations. Especially not if traffic has to be involved. Any abundance of strangers (especially angry strangers inside machinery) is anxiety-inducing to me in a way that I did not realize until living in a busy place like this.
I have said many times "I'd rather be busy than bored," usually when people asked how I was handling heavy loads of work at school, or how I was balancing full-time work with community theatre involvement. I'm not particularly good at finding ways to busy myself, so having several obligations to force me out of my shell and push me past thinking about social anxiety is my preferred lifestyle. When I am bored, I have too much time to think and sink into sadness over all the many stresses in life. Letting myself sink into that stress/sadness combo feels like the scene from The Neverending Story where Atreyu loses Artax, and I can't handle that being my mentality so often (it has been happening a lot lately).
My sanity sometimes feels like it is slipping. I had to take on less hours at a job recently, in large part because of my mental health. I think I have a lot of pent-up angst, worry, and sadness bopping around inside me like a pinball machine, and that job required a permanently cheerful face while dealing with difficult personalities on a regular basis, and I struggled as I've never struggled before in a job.
I'm actually a very good employee; I'm hard-working, I care about getting things done the way they should be done, I'm productive, I find useful and helpful things to do during downtime... But I felt like a bad employee there. I'm still subbing in for random shifts here and there, but I'm not there full-time anymore. And what feels crazy about that to me is that I was most definitely being kept busy! I was busy, and needed, but I was hating it. I couldn't handle it.
I don't know if the big problem is that I'm missing a sense of community and friendship?... I was looking back through recent years as I thought about life yesterday, and I realized how many communities I've been part of and then left in recent years. I was a regular at a certain community theatre, and I left. I was working at a pediatric dental office where I got along very well with my co-workers and boss, and I left. I was working at a playhouse two summers in a row, and I didn't go back for a third. I was attending school full-time in an immersive theatre program, and I graduated. And I grew up in a church that shaped so much of who I grew up to be, and I stopped attending. Most of those exits have occurred within the past three years, maybe four. All of it has definitely occurred within the past five years.
I've thought about going back to church at times. However, I honestly don't have aligned beliefs with all of the church's teachings anymore. There are certainly things that I miss about that church, primarily the feeling of community I had within it (without having to stretch myself too far to feel like a part of the community). But I don't think I actually belong there anymore. And I don't think I can lie to leaders about my beliefs just to feel included again. It wouldn't be right, and that wouldn't be true to myself or to the community I'd be attempting to rejoin. I think, simply, the issue is that I sincerely miss belonging somewhere.
Being someone with a somewhat-recently broken family (my parents are divorced and loathe one another), I don't even feel the sense of belonging that I used to feel amongst my own family. Everything feels messy and jumbled, now. And I know that even the school I miss so terribly will look completely different to me in two-three years' time. The students I attended with will have moved on. Some of the faculty will be moving on (some of them already have). That community is not mine anymore; but I was so incredibly fond of it. It was such a struggle getting myself into that community in the first place; I sacrificed a few other communities in order to be a part of that one (I had to drop the dental office, and I dropped the community theatre involvement because I needed to dedicate my time and artistic efforts in full to my artistic education instead).
Sometimes I wonder: what was it all for? I have a degree now. Did my college community completely override every community I'd been a part of until then? I know that the things I learned and experienced there had an influence on my opinions and emotions... Did I sacrifice more than I even realized in order to obtain that degree?
...would I do it again?
Honestly I think my answer is "yes." And that clears up a little bit of angst for me. I was preparing to be angry with myself for getting that degree I struggled so hard for.
Maybe I'm just looking for somebody/something to blame, when I'm way off the mark. Everyone struggles. Maybe it doesn't have to be someone's/something's fault. Maybe I honestly need to just struggle past my own carefully-built barriers and get myself into a better place. With or without a community to prove anything to. With or without a sense of belonging. Maybe I just need to find out how to belong to myself, and how to own my life, and live it with good intentions.
Maybe I can still be as good and kind a person as I was when I attended church. Maybe I can still be as productive a person as I was when I attended school. And maybe I can still be as vivacious a person as I was when I was good at dental assisting, and when I was involved in fun productions and projects on a regular basis. Maybe I just need to stop relying on a distracting lifestyle. I wish to be busy, but being busy might not be a real answer to my problems. Perhaps all it is is a distraction from the anxieties that I refuse to process. Perhaps I don't need a community in order to feel validated as a human being. Maybe I don't need approval in order to feel good about myself. Maybe I can just start by being a kind person who takes care of herself and her loved ones. Maybe all of the other nonsense will fall to the wayside if I let it. Maybe strangers will frighten me less if I don't prioritize the approval of others so highly in my life. Maybe I can just live my life the best way I know how and let the nonsense be nonsense. Maybe I can care more about being genuinely myself again.
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