Drowning in my own ambitions

Stay busy. Write. Read. Play video games. Date. Hang out with friends. Be the world’s best cat mom. Study to be a better nurse. Study to learn more. Study to feel like you are smart and that you belong. Strive for better. Be better. Just be better.

I have spent the last four years striving for one thing. Emergency Room Nursing. In the last few months, not only have I secured a job at a level one trauma centers Emergency Department. I have also successfully graduated with my BSN and passed my NCLEX. I thought things would be better. I will feel better. I will have succeeded, and this will prove to me that I am good enough. Instead, I have filled my time with more things than I can handle. I am drowning in the game of balance. A game that everyone knows all too well, which makes my feelings of failure seem illegitimate, whinnying, spoiled, and more. I am LUCKY to have gotten my dream job. I am lucky to be where I am in life. Yet, I feel like I am an imposter waiting for someone to take this all away from me.
Because of this, I find myself striving for more. I want to read more and write more. I want to play PC with the guy I am with so he can find me worthy of his affection. I want to hang out with my friends, so they do not move on and forget about me. I want to spoil my cat and ensure he is happy. I want to sign up for classes to learn more about nursing or anything. I am still striving for more and learning to be better. I want to be better.

I am proud of where I am, and if you were to ask me, I love who I am and how far I have come in life. Yet, this is not enough. The compulsion to do more and be more overwhelms me every single day. I am drowning in all I feel I need to be. Yet, I cannot find a way to stop. I fear that I won’t stop. I fear that I will finally succumb to myself, and I will lose it all. Just as it happened not even a few months ago. I was drowning and struggling even to put on a smile. I was constantly drunk, unable to stop myself from drinking half a bottle to a whole bottle of wine in one sitting, multiple times a day. The person I considered one of my closest friends drifted away.
I would be the only one messaging first. I would be the one struggling and wishing to stay in touch. Instead, I got ignored messages and “I’m busy” replies. Only to see her post pictures with her new friends. Slowly I stopped messaging her. I couldn’t bear it anymore. She never reached out or asked why. The sinking continued. The boy I had dated a few months prior tried so hard to stay in touch and be friends. I wanted nothing more than to be friends with him. While in a romantic aspect, we did not work, we could still hold a strong friendship. Instead, I began pushing him away.
I never wanted him to feel as if he couldn’t reach out to me. But after a while, I couldn’t hold a conversation anymore. The drinking, anxiety, and hatred of myself only grew and grew. And as it grew, the messages became shorter and shorter. Instead of concern, I received speeches and essays about how my shorting of messages affected him. I sat there holding back tears, wanting to scream that I was trying. I knew that there was a time and a place for everything, and at that moment, my problems were not a priority. But like all else, after a while, I couldn’t do it anymore. I stopped replying, so did he, and now nothing. We no longer talk. Every once in and while, I think to message him, but I fear I will only shut down again and cause more pain.

About two months ago, I truly hit my bottom for numerous reasons that I feel are not important at this moment in time. However, my rock bottom was sitting on my couch crying, looking up ways on Google, Pinterest. TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter to self-harm without leaving a mark. Then it slowly turned to suicide. Luckily I couldn’t find anything that was “useful” at the time. And instead, I downloaded every dating app I had, hoping to find someone to have meaningless sex with to fill my time and make me feel something again. That’s when I met the golden boy, whom we will discuss in a future post. However, I bring him up now to say that I feel myself beginning to feel joy and feel that I need to keep improving and striving for more. I feel myself drowning in all that I want to be and achieve. I fear that soon I will have nothing left because I am trying to be everything, and I will be back to sitting on my couch alone, wanting to disappear from the world. My emotions are fighting each other and destroying me in the process. Ambition, needing acceptance, fear, and pain freeze my entire body, and I become nothing. Nothing more than a child wanting to be held and told that I am enough and will be okay.

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