marissa belle ｡･:*˚:✧｡࿐

This post is gonna be a bit different than my usual lifestyle slash beauty posts. Not only because my blog is a journal, but because it is my journal and I want to document things that I would like to keep track of.

Comparing yourself to someone else. Who hasn’t done it? We’ve all done it at some point. But there can come a time where it can get obsessive and excessive, and I am ashamed to admit that I have possibly reached that point.

For the past few months I’ve seen friends get engaged, have babies (although this is something I do not want – I don’t like babies), buy their first homes, get a new pet.. the list goes on. All during lockdown as well, what the heck! My bitterness relating to the fact that I have acquired none of these in my life has got me feeling really bad about myself.

I have always dreamed of having my own home in the countryside in England but I’m 27 years old, stuck in a job I don’t really like, living under my parents’ roof.

INSTAGRAM. The devil. This is where I mostly see all of these things that make me feel worse about myself, but yet, I can’t put the app away. Why, you ask? Because it might be an addiction. Am I addicted to looking at people’s almost-perfect lives, or am I addicted to deprecating myself? It’s a tough one to answer, but I think it might be both. On one hand, I definitely live vicariously through the lives of many of my friends, whilst also spending a lot of time dwelling on why I’m where I am.

The pandemic certainly hasn’t helped. I’m more glued down than I ever was.

If you have a relatively ‘good’ life, even though the meaning of a good life is different for everyone, I’ve probably, at some point, wished I were you.

And I wish I didn’t.

It’s not like I have a bad life. I have a roof over my head, a paying job, a boyfriend who loves me, a small circle of supportive friends and an even bigger circle of online friends. I don’t really have much to complain about.

I like very simple things – lying in bed on my phone watching funny TikTok videos, making soaps for my small business, writing posts for my blog, having a really good tomato and cheese pasta, drinking my Yorkshire Tea every morning.. really simple things. And I enjoy them. But why do I also feel like they’re not enough? They seem enough, don’t they?

I spend hours on Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter looking at pictures of houses, new countries I haven’t seen and things I haven’t done and wish I had the bank balance of a Kardashian-Jenner to do all those things and more.

BUT.. I feel stuck. Like, what have I accomplished in the past 3 years since graduating from university? My life has felt stagnant. I got my Master’s Degree and wasn’t even able to get a job related to my degree. Stuck in retail now, working past 9pm most nights.

Whereas people have gone on to move to different countries, gotten married and gotten a home.

Honestly – the home is what I want most. Obviously marriage has been in the talks, as well as a potential cockatiel for a pet, but the home is the most desired for me at the moment. I can’t believe I’m being this transparent – I don’t really like being so open. My boyfriend and I talk about our future little home all the time and what we’d have in it but the pandemic has honestly halted all the plans we had been speaking about.

My constant chatter about wanting a home and how sad I am that I’m still in Singapore has definitely taken a toll on my boyfriend whom I do feel bad for. It is also part of why I am writing this post – to get this out of my system. I know that me talking about all that stuff with him makes him feel a little sad and bad, because we aren’t living the life we wished we had at 27. It also frustrates him because he always tells me that everyone’s circumstance is different and that comparing ourselves to other people does not make sense in the grand scheme of things.

And I completely understand that! It makes perfect sense.

So why do I still do it? Is it a call for pity from whoever will listen, or do I have some sort of warped dependency towards making myself feel lower than I am?

I don’t know, and I’m sad that I don’t know. I want to be able to solve this issue as much as the next person and I want to openly talk about it with you guys. This is why I’m writing a post about it.

Today, May 11th 2021, I start my journey.

I want to stop comparing myself to you.