I understand what it feels like
As I am entering, what’s supposed to be, quarter life I am realizing how confusing, and consuming things get. I understand Rory Gilmore more and more, about how she felt when she stepped out in the real world and she was not able to be as perfect as she expected herself to be. She felt like she will disappoint everyone by being even a little bit less than perfect, and what is she if not perfect, overachieving, and loved by all.
I feel the same, in this all consuming time, where everyone is better than you and they always know more than you, how will I ever be on their level, how will I participate in conversations, contribute in any way, how will I become someone admirable, will I loose myself trying to achieve that dream of a person that I want to be? Or will I die trying and never knowing what true happiness looks like.
I read someone that happiness and hopefulness are synonymous which makes the opposite of happiness hopelessness and not sadness. I believe that to be true, because while feeling sad we still are hopeful of letting it all pass but while hopeless our mind is nothing but a draught of emotions.
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During this quarter life crisis, I keep battling different super villains of my own creation. The easiest way to defeat them is to stop thinking about them. But my mind is a maze of all the experiences in shape of incidents and emotions. They keep moving like ghosts along the maze trying to find an escape. Sometimes when they collide together it can either be a beautiful daydream or a horrifying nightmare, latter is more frequent occurrence than the former. These nightmares reel me back in the loop of not being good enough, not being enough at all, being a constant disappointment.
I have read many theories to get rid of it. It all sounds good on paper, but to make a habit out of them takes courage and a lot of constant motivation from yourself and not from others. The idea is your mind will retain whatever you think and will process according to that information, if you tell yourself you aren’t good enough it will create doubt, if you will think you will be better one step at a time it will motivate you.
See it does sound easy right, all you have to do is keep telling yourself to keep going one step at a time, every single day, constantly. But the reality is it takes effort and it’s taxing to do it everyday, and the results don’t appear magically in one day time. The easy thing is to slip into your habits of overthinking. For those of us who do not exhibit, hope and opportunities in the face of uncertainty but another way of screwing up, and disappointing people, for those of us who have not inherited the habit being positive and considering the good options while imagining the bad one. For people like you and me its easy to slip in the habit discouraging our own selves instead of trying to stay positive. And isn’t that the greatest injustice for all of us.
I am not writing this article to proving any ailment to our kind of thinking, just to tell my kind of people that I am another one of you.
-Apoorva Verma
