Plans
I find myself hesitating when it comes to making plans for this quarter. I know I’m not alone when I come across a fresh start in life and then resolve to make some changes, make some plans to do better. Everyone does it. And everyone gives up after a day or two. It’s just like resolutions people make each new year. We plan to do better and yet we don’t. Perhaps we’ve dug ourselves too good of a rut, become too comfortable with our lifestyle and it’s too much of a hassle to change, even if it’s a change for the better.
Logically, I know I should be reading and writing more. I should be exercising and doing yoga and meditating and trying to clear my head. I should pray more and go to church. I should cut out all sweets and soda. Yet, here I sit, day after day, wasting my time and my life away on YouTube and Doritos. I don’t write. Unread books are piled up in the corner of my room. My memoir goes unwritten and each day that passes is another memory lost, another situation that goes unrecorded and less material to work from. I’m not out in the sunshine, not soaking up nature and appreciating the beauty of the light and wind.
It’s just hard. I feel safer in my enclosed space, my tiny bedroom. This is all mine and no one can take this from me. This is no one else’s. I can be selfish in my room. I don’t have to interact with people, don’t have to put on a show and pretend to be something I’m not. I can just be my unflinchingly true self. And that is comfortable because it’s hard to put on a mask on a daily basis and be something to everyone. It’s exhausting and I think that’s why I don’t have any energy to change my ways. I’m too tired to exercise, too emotionally exhausted to relive my life and write about it, too drained to do anything but sit and rot. It’s hard to work on relationships when I don’t like anyone. It’s hard to work on myself when I don’t like who I am. It’s too much trouble to start over so I just keep everything messy because, allthough I don’t like it, it’s easier to manage than completely overhauling everything.
There’s a disappointment that follows not following plans. Every summer for as long as I could remember I’d say I was going ot lose a ton of weight. I always said when I got back to school everyone was going to be shocked at how good I looked. It never happened. I was always my same old fat self and nothing ever changed. No one ever looked at me different. I always say I’m going to take better care of myself but I never did. I still don’t. I just don’t care about myself enough to say, "Hey, Brannon! You gotta do better, buddy. This is not the life you were meant to have." Instead I think to myself, "Well, you suck anyway so you deserve to be miserable." And I’m disappointed that I didn’t follow through with the new plans I’ve made. I just let myself down over and over again, which doesn’t help with the whole dislike for myself thing. It’s a cycle. It’s a dirty, demeaning cycle and somehow I’ve thrown myself into this and I don’t know how to throw myself out. And so I stay as I am, bloated and sick of everything.
I have a feeling this quarter will be just like all the others. I’ll wake up late, go to class, do homework, eat a ton of junk, waste my time on the internet and then go to sleep at three in the morning. Rinse and repeat until graduation. Nothing meaningful or healthy. Just purely withering.
Ah, at least I can take comfort in knowing I’ll follow through with those plans. It’s the only way I won’t disappoint myself.