So which milestone have i reached again to make me want to shed old skin this time?
Anyone who knows me would attest to it. I never imagined it possible, but I was actually and honestly downright depressed. I went to work like a ghost, decided to stop talking for a few days, stopped eating, and cried every night to sleep like the people i used to laugh at and call overacting. Some days i didn't even want to go about my routines (yes, at one particular weekend, I didn't even want to shower. Disgusting. I know.) Everyone who came close found out, to their regret that they even came close, that i was drama on a stick, and I'd like to take this time to apologize to anyone and everyone who got a hefty serving. (My boyfriend and main girls especially, who must have wanted to shove my celphone up my ass for texting them morose messages every single day.)
Honestly, I just snapped. It was ongoing for some time, just that it never quite hit until it hit, and when it did... oh my god. I've always felt a bit confused, a bit impatient, okay.. a lot impatient with how my life is going. I was living on my own means, figuring out what to do with my life, and coping with the fact that my life goals are near their due dates, and i'm far from getting to them. Then one day, like a boulder falling from the sky, I found myself broke, losing my promotion, with friendships falling apart and never-ending fights with the people i love.
My friend lex gave me the term for it. Quarter life crisis. It is a term applied to the period of life immediately following the major changes of adolescence, usually ranging from the early twenties to the early thirties. (source: wikipedia)
from associatedcontent.com
Characteristics of quarter-life crisis may include:
- feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at one's academic/intellectual level
- frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career confusion of identity
- insecurity regarding the near future
- insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals insecurity regarding present accomplishments
re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships - disappointment with one's job nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
- boredom with social interactions
- loss of closeness to high school and college friends
- financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
- loneliness
- desire to have children (THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO ME)
- a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you
Honestly, I blame this on the smarty pants generation that I belong to. See, I'm 21 turning 22 in a month. If you're in my age range at all, you'd know how huge an expectation it is for us to be smart kids, with huge ambitions to rule the world. Remember when you were about 6 years old, and you only wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, or president? Must have been the formula milk or the rise of cable tv, but agree with me on this one, our generation was groomed to be phenomenal.
And oh. Whoelse here auditioned or wanted to be little miss philippines? Show of hands please? Mine is raised. Made my point.
I guess it was with this upbringing and line of thinking that we realize even at a tender age that we were made for great things. That's why it's just really hard to find yourself standing in the middle of nowhere with no direction ahead (or a little miss philippines title). When you get to accept this status, you fall apart and crumble, and there's no stopping it.
I turned to friends, I turned to religion, I turned to alcohol, I turned to self-help books. To no avail. I started my road to self-destruction. I started distancing myself from friends, I ditched family, I almost broke up with my boyfriend over nothing, and fell into a deep pit of self-pity and disappointment over the things that I knew I should be but I'm not.
However, there's something to gain from this. Quarter-life crisis is the real shift from careless youth to maturity. It is at this point where expectation meets real plans, and this is the border where you just shake yourself and deliberate on the life that you want and the life that you're living. This is a stage of mourning. You mourn your days of flight, you mourn your undone ambitions, and just like any form of mourning, you rise above it, on your own time, just by knowing that you have to because there's another day ahead. The only cure is yourself.
In the midst of the vicious phase, I stepped out of it as easy as I stepped in. That being said, I'm also saying that I'm not completely out. But i have mustered whatever courage that i have in myself to confront the shit that i'm in and learned to breathe again. When you find your groove you will recall how it feels to be grateful and otimistic, you try to tap into your inner passion, you make a way to save yourself. It's human nature. When this instinct runs its course you remember that life only throws you down to the ground so you'd learn the bliss of standing up.
The reason why I'm writing about this is because I'm aware of the fact that many others may be going through the same thing that I did. Not that I feel I'm authority on the matter, but it's hard to fight this alone. I know it's wrong to find company in misery, however it's good to hear from people who gets beyond it, if only to spark a bit of hope that everything will be fine. This is something that i'm sure everyone knows already, still there's a sense of comfort in hearing it from someone else.
Everything WILL be fine. How soon it will be, however, is up to yourself. You must never lose sense of that.
So there. As shared in the light of a scorpion state of mind, I wish everyone the rebirth and optimism that i now have and contuously am gaining back.
This may just be the biggest milestone of my life. However, I think instead of running away from my past, I think I'm keeping it as a victory under my belt.
And yeah, I'm keeping my blog too. :)
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