There’s always been this pressure for perfection and just being good, at everything that’s really weighed me down, especially these last few years. What sucks is I know half of it is all me, because I want to be good at everything I do, I know this.

In terms of my emotional health, I think it’s suffered a lot because of the expectations placed on me. Because I’m the kind of person, if you say: I should know this or I’ll be doing Great Things once I graduate, I’m beating myself over not knowing what ou expected me to know, not doing great things.

Growing up, a lot of people looked up to me in small or big ways. And I had a tendency to pick up on that, or at least never forget once it was mentioned. Sometimes people would openly tell me how much I inspired them or how much they envied me and I thought, everything I do must continue to meet said person’s expectations of me. Why? Because I’m letting them down otherwise.

I guess it’s the biggest flaw of wanting to uphold honesty and sincerity no matter what.

It’s kind of amazing to think about though, because those same people, who shit talked themselves all the time or had at least one complain they verbalized to me, were the same people I looked up to. I could never really pinpoint what it was that inspired me so much but they, to me, were so honest, they were so open and willing to say their life sucked and needed fixing. Even if they didn’t say it out right, even when they didn’t see that there was something wrong with their way of thinking, I thought the fact that they could talk about it and then deal with everyone else’s opinion – no matter how harsh or how unwilling they actually were to listen, was amazing.

Writing this out, I think what I’m trying to say is I never felt comfortable enough to voice certain parts of my life. I did have good enough friends that saw through some of my shortcomings, some of the things I was struggling with but I always struggled to talk about it. And by talking about it, I mean in a very serious, nonsensical way.

Maybe mental health wasn’t acknowledged as something that needed to be addressed. Maybe everything seemed just fine to us because I was always so conceited, narcissistic and ready to make jokes. Maybe I just covered it up well or maybe I did think I needed to talk it out. All I know is, I have always regretted not being completely sincere about getting help from others. And it sucks.

It just gets worse when I know I have many people in my life, family and friends that would be more than willing to talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. But I just can’t.

I don’t know how to.

I’m always worried about wasting time, their’s and mine. I’m worried that maybe I don’t know them well enough for them to care, give an honest opinion or advice that could help. And worse, yet again, I don’t think I know how to take advice anymore.

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note – believe it or not, this was supposed to be really positive. I’m not sure what happened.