That day was the first day of grad school. My hands are trembling just thinking about that day and what it has meant to me. How it has changed my life and how I live it. How it has permeated into more than just my academic and professional career, but my near and dear personal and social life as I knew it; my most cherished relationships and the aspects of myself that I thought I had truly valued.
Granted that I also had a miserable year in 2014, when I felt I was at my lowest point. But at least it felt so temporary. As if I knew the solution to the problem and all I needed was to take the chance. So I did it (which was: quit my job). The past year and a half is different from that experience because it was something inevitable. A problem I can now say in retrospect that I knew existed and neglected, and exploded into what I experience now, which is intense and uncontrollable anxiety. It was bound to happen.
As the end is nearing, I think about all the journal entries I wrote about how awful school is and what's wrong with me? and am I crazy? and I hate this and this is stupid and why am I doing this to myself? and how I don't feel like myself anymore and how unrecognizable my personality has become to me. It's scary to feel like you don't recognize yourself anymore. I remember looking into a mirror literally feeling like I was looking at a stranger. How out-of-body it felt. Will I be like this for the rest of my life?
It was extremely dysfunctional, I'm aware. And at times, I still am. The dysfunction was how I talked to myself in my head for the past year and a half. You can imagine what that does to a person's psyche.
When I was in my overly dramatic teenage years, I used to lock myself in my room or go in the shower and cry. I remember thinking, Does anyone except God know how I feel inside?
Ten years later, it has become a permanent "note to self" that every person goes through hardships, whatever that means to them, and every person probably has their own rendition of my emotional collapse. I know humans find solace in their misery when they know they're not alone in their feeling or experience, so this draconian thought keeps me going: we're all just looking for the most comfortable way to breathe air. Some people handle it well, and some people don't. Regardless, there's a load everyone carries.
I get why people turn to religion or a higher power. To me, it isn't so much that God is the only one who knows how I feel anymore. It's that we try to empathize with each other simply because we will never understand exactly what others are going through.
