This is me, 10 days before my 25th birthday

me except 25 not 27. this is the happier part two to the quarter-life crisis blog. first part found here.

“the party can only last as long as I am willing to ignore all the lovely and happy things that are occurring right before my eyes. I can be frightened; I can also look to those around me in wonder and in awe and with so much love and – Maybe that is what I am worth –”

This is me, 10 days before my 25th birthday trying to convince myself that I’m worth something because I’ve moved across the country with no plan and no prospects and I have to be worth something. Otherwise, everything I have ever given up and never done is worth nothing. I’m not sure what else I am worth to anyone. I’m not sure if it’s fair for me to expect anyone to believe I’m worth reading even one more word. I embody that Pride and Prejudice quote, when Charlotte Lucas talks about being a burden and being frightened. Because I am, just a little bit (actually quite a bit, if I’m being honest), frightened. 

I am ultimately a fairly optimistic person, as in: I believe that I have to stay positive for positive things to happen. I’m also very realistic and have a hard time feeling bad for myself even when I am feeling bad for myself. I hate to feel bad for myself! I hate self-pity! That is why my writing oscillates between that feeling, and then a healthy amount of self-lauding. Self-lauding that perhaps even crosses into over-confidence. Because I feel things, like loneliness or hopeless desperation, but I shouldn’t feel those things because they aren’t true and I know they’re not. I’m not alone, and I’m not hopelessly desperate. I am so consciously aware that it’s no one’s job except for my own to make sure that my bad feelings don’t spiral into something larger, something worse. It’s up to me to make sure that those bad things are balanced out with the good. And–

I think what I mean is, yes, I enjoy my own company. But I also crave, every single time I see it happen for someone else, for a person to sit across from me and hold my hand and tell me they see what I am doing. The recognition that I am putting in these hours of work and they understand that it’s tiring and they’re proud that I haven’t stopped. They see that I keep screaming into the wind even when it has taken so much and given little back. I can’t stop myself from wanting someone to look at me and say that they see that it’s hard right now, and they see that I’m trying, and that they’ll be there if it gets even harder (because it feels like life will get harder, because when nothing good has happened for a long time, when you simply cannot catch a break, it’s difficult to imagine that things could ever get better even though they, realistically, will). I sometimes get tired of having to be reasonable all the time; I want someone to put their hands on my face and I want someone to let me be unreasonable, just for one single second. I know, realistically, that it’s no one else’s burden to carry but my own and it’s not fair to place things like this, like spontaneous and erroneous loneliness, upon people who are already trying to manage their own life. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting.

Yet I have to say, due to my enduring optimism, that I truly find beauty in the world when good things happen around me, even beyond reason. I have been blessed 1000 times over with platonic companionship, and perhaps I take that for granted. My friends, my beautiful friends, deserve to feel everything good– I want them to only ever feel like I am giving them love. I want to only every give them the best, brightest version of myself. I want them to come to me when good things happen and I want us to be so happy that our faces hurt from smiling. I wish for them: their dream jobs, to find the loves of their lives, that their favorite movie always on TV, to find a billion dollars in the street, that the radio only every plays the music they like. And I feel that yes, if this can happen for them, it can happen for me, too. There is the smallest, most ragged voice in the back of my mind (he’s really only there sometimes, only at night, mostly) who will say, “maybe you are just fundamentally different. Maybe you are just fundamentally not meant for success and you’ve wasted every love and every opportunity you’ve ever had. Everything you have ever chosen is wrong.” But then my friend gets a job or tells me they’re in love or tells me they found the most perfect, smooth stone on their walk today or sends me a photo of something funny. And that nasty little voice goes away for a little bit, just long enough for me to rejoice because my friend has accomplished something wonderful, something that they so, so deeply deserve. And I love my friends so much (so much that it’s making me cry) that when I’m reminded that they love me, I am convinced that I’m worth something even if I don’t feel like it all the time. 

It’s even more than that. It’s the people I’ve known, even in passing, doing the things that I heard them mention off-hand. The girl in law school, whose hands I held when I read her tarot cards for fun on the apartment floor; the boy at the engineering firm, who sat behind me in class and was kind to me just because I needed help with math; the opera singer, whose picture was next to mine in the year book for seven years straight. They have all achieved extraordinary things and I am grateful to have known them and have kept their company, even for just a moment. I know people who do extraordinary things, and the knowledge that these things can be done somehow is just enough.

I think, in the course of writing this, I have changed my own perspective. So yes, I perhaps want someone to tell me that things will be okay and to help me get up. But I can also see that things become okay for others all the time; every day, really. Perhaps I want to stop being realistic, and that’s all fine and good. I can throw myself a pity-party, but the party can only last as long as I am willing to ignore all the lovely and happy things that are occurring right before my eyes. I can be frightened; I can also look to those around me in wonder and in awe and with so much love and – Maybe that is what I am worth – if they are, then I am worth the abundance of all the emotions that I feel at once: desperation, love, pride, loneliness, exhaustion, exuberance. And I’ve now remembered how lovely and important everything is.

Perhaps my life is a bit stalled right now. But why not cheer on and admire those around me while I wait for it to start? Like sitting at a train station, I imagine it’s far more enjoyable to wave at the passengers heading to their destination than it is to steep in rank jealousy that your train isn’t at the platform yet. Anger won’t make the train arrive any faster. (I’ve really only taken the train a few times, mostly in Europe– but I know that it’s true.)

The truth is this: I’ve cried every day for a week straight. I have $100 in my saving’s account and a credit card statement to pay. I’ve never felt less like love is something I deserve. I can’t sleep at night because it feels like I’m wasting time. I think I’m going to go to Puerto Rico, and all that will change is the scenery. I don’t express this to anyone. I think there’s just nothing to be done about it because–

The truth is also this: I have a very beautiful life. I’m surrounded by the most wonderful people and I have a home and a family to return to whenever I’d like. I am my cat’s favorite person in the world (which may mean nothing to you, but don’t be rude about it because it means everything to me). I take walks for fun, just because I can, and I get to listen same three songs over and over. I write. I can always, always write. I am the epitome of a human being and everything that I feel is just proof that I am really, really alive.

I told you, I’m an optimist.