Do we obsess because we’re bored?

In a world where the state of your reality isn’t prioritized or even questioned,

I spent a long time in a place created and dictated by others. A pseudo-reality made up purely of others’ perceptions of me and what they thought. The problem with living in someone else’s reality is that it gets boring. Your life is only as good as theirs.

Not that their life sucks; but it’s not mine. Why would I want something that isn’t mine, to call mine?

It’s fake.

So, when I found a pinhole, I folded myself up 18 times and squeezed through. On the other side, I woke up in emptiness. My heart shattered in to a million pieces when I realized I was looking at myself.

But before I go on, what does it mean to obsess, anyway? Why does it happen?

I obsess when I’m bored. I obsess when I need a distraction – when I need to feel like I have control. And feel something.

Feel something.

Ah, there she is.

When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw that my exhausting efforts to repress myself had led me to obsess over just about everything but myself. I had neglected my dreams, fears, secrets and everything else that made me vulnerable. Everything that made me, me.

When I obsess, I lose sight of the future. I care about shit I don’t really care about, I confuse myself, and I feel nothing in the end. When I obsess, I see things that aren’t there, food tastes different, and I don’t remember who I was yesterday.

It’s everything that goes against being myself.

At the same time, my identity had gotten so lost in my obsessions that without it, I felt naked. And I hadn’t seen my body in ages. I cried and cried because I thought I had lost everything.

Where do I go from here?

I turned myself inside out and flipped everything I had ever known on its head.

I couldn’t take back lost time, neither did I want to. My obsessions had shown my dark side, but it also showed me just how capable I was. The pure red passion I put in to my obsessions was still my own – just misguided.

I used to obsess because I didn’t know how to love.

I used to obsess because I didn’t understand how I felt about myself. I didn’t know what I wanted.

I used to obsess because I thought it made me better. Stronger? I didn’t care about being me.

But now I do!

I want to be real,

I want to be present,

I want to be here!

As someone who isn’t real and exists on a plane where time doesn’t exist, it’s hard to be any of those things – but I’d rather be here than nowhere.