To be honest, I’m struggling a little bit.
Okay, a lotta bit.
We celebrated my brother’s 27th birthday this past weekend. Twenty-seven; six-ish years my senior. He has an apartment that he shares with his 5-year-old Golden Retriever. He’s a success story; an internship he had during his undergrad summers morphed into a career. He’s single. He watches seasons of TV shows on Netflix, takes the dog out for walks and visits friends. He’s happy.
In fact, I’ll never forget what he told me during my birthday celebration a couple months back when I told my family about a guy who wanted to take me out on a date.
“It’s okay to be single for awhile, Em,” he said.
You may have read this post a few months back. I wrote that 89 days ago. I’ve kissed six different guys over these past 89 days, ultimately (drunkenly) sleeping with two of them. I looked up the word “slut” in the dictionary and have concluded I am neither promiscuous or slovenly –– I’m merely going for the men who seem to readily give me attention. “Promiscuous” implies I’ve had sexual relations with each of these six guys and that is simply not the case.
Still, in the process, I’ve lost real feelings. So imagine me a little over a month ago when a really nice, respectable guy began giving me attention. I went a little nuts and it scared me shitless. He scared me shitless. My friends told me they could tell how much I liked him by the speed of my talking and the high-pitch tone my voice adopted. That scared me, too. Now I think I’ve scared him away. Real smooth, Em, ya dummy.
I’ve realized that being rejected really depresses me. I go into full-blown nihilism mode and lose track of everything I’m working for, everything I’m trying to be. I’ve lived under the mindset of what good is anything if I have nobody to share that ‘anything’ with? for a very long time, leading to never watching movies by myself or going shopping for fun by myself.
I need to get back in touch with the adventurous version of myself I found while living away from home last summer for an internship. My brother’s found it. I’d like to join him. I’d like to be happy, learn from my past mistakes and begin a new relationship when I’m good and ready for it. Too many of my insecurities rule my life and my way of thinking –– I need to squash them before I begin anything new.
Fuck.
Backyard Philosophy 
I often think the key to happiness is perspective: trying to distance yourself from the assault of daily diversions, distractions, stimuli, etc., and take stock of your overall situation.
In that assault so many things happen that can stress us out. Recently, for example, I lost my wallet, creating a whole chain reaction of stresses and inconveniences that I’m still sorting through. But taking a step back to get perspective, I looked at what I could control, did it, and now the situation is getting better. And since feeling out of control is what causes stress, not being busy, I don’t feel stressed.
Thus, it sounds to me that the deeper issue is a feeling of a lack of control. So I would go the Stoic way and try to look at what you can control and focus on that. If you can’t control it, it’s not worth worrying about. If you can’t help but worry about it, find ways that you can control or channel it.
Hope this helps with your situation, mon amie.
Nice post.