Progress Report 1: I'm Addicted To Peace

Now, most of you reading this won't know but I have quite a short temper.

It's a negative quality of mine that I discovered at quite a young age maybe around 7/8 because up until the age of 16 I was a perfectionist. Not the kind where it meant that my work was always completed to the highest standard because I was also a realist. So, I always knew that the pursuit of perfection will inevitably lead to disappointment because perfection doesn't exist, it’s the ultimate unattainable goal. Instead, I was the kind of perfectionist where whenever anything didn't go exactly to plan I would freak out. Imagine a combination of a short temper, a perfectionist nature and being incredible insecure you get a lot of internal tantrums. Not occasionally but very often. 

Fast forward to now, 19-year-old me and I'm still trying to control this internal temper while discovering new injustices in the world daily and trying to navigate my way through life. As I get older I get more information about the world outside my own personal bubble and therefore I hear social injustices around the world. From donations, not being given to the Grenfell victims and the Grenfell fire happening in the first place to young black people in both the US and UK being killed by the police. Now, having a short temper is a negative trait, period. In my opinion, a loss of control at the slightest thing is a sign of immaturity so every day I learn to control it more and more but sometimes I can't. But anger isn't always negative, only when it's uncontrolled.

Therefore, let me introduce the beauty of the rant. For those of you who don't know I think out loud (aka talk to myself) a lot. It's the only way that I process information and remember things because I'm a verbal learner. This isn't really a problem when I'm in my room and when I'm out and about I'll pretend to be on the phone to stop the stares, because it's just something I do. However, when I'm upset I also express this internal temper out loud. My close friends at uni witnessed this a lot around exam season and laugh at my tennis-like grunts as I told myself off for leaving a deadline to the last minute, but honestly, it's like therapy for me. This is how I keep my short-temper in check.

A genuine candid of me smiling to myself

In my first post about why I started this blog (click here to read) I spoke about this emotional journey I'm on and I've finally seen some progress. Right now, I'm sat in my room, doing last minute packing before I leave in a few hours to go back to uni and nothing is going to plan. But, I've not lost my temper, I'm not angry. There have been no grunting, no rants. Instead I'm sipping on my second red bull, listening to Freudian by Daniel Caesar on repeat and I've accepted that absolutely nothing has gone to plan but that's ok. There's always a plan B to Z so I've got a lot of leeway. Should I be taking 20 minutes out of my limited time to be writing? No, but the world will keep spinning. Even though it's 6:30, I haven't slept and I've probably forgotten half the stuff I need but have packed everything I don't need, I'm not stressing. I haven't need to whack out my asthma pump, no tears have been shed, I'm calm.

Now, don't get it twisted, I'm not going to drop out of uni and live the rest of days in a field watching clouds, but now I've had a taste of a version of my life where I don't stress about every detail I'm addicted. Will I still get stressed about little things? Yes. It's a process not an instant solution.

But, I'm have a taste and I'm addicted to peace. I can't wait to get my next fix.