That crazy moment when you realize you haven’t updated your blog since before you graduated college. This thing that I started to get over my first boyfriend has grown to be a monstrosity. A beautiful beautiful monster. 

In this tumultuous time, I haven’t turned to this for a reason. I’m scared shitless. My fear is slightly paralyzing. My graduation was about a month ago. I don’t have a job and I am not writing. Period. I’m shutting down in hopes of the weight of the world not crushing me. To be honest, I’m placing it there. I can’t help myself. I’m a mess. I’ve accepted that and I am doing what I always do — I’m working on it. In the words of Rahma, I have to “chill the fuck out”. 

That is what I am learning to do these days. We all put so much pressure on ourselves (introverted journalist cancers). It’s wild. Sometimes I feel like it’s not the weight of the world on my shoulders but rather the weight of every galaxy known and unknown to man. My panic attacks are back. My self esteem is shot because I can’t seem to land on my next opportunity. I can tell I am being released into the world but I have no idea what that means for me and where to go. All of that is happening inside my head.

Social media isn’t helping. I can feel myself projecting a false image because I am feeling so down. The sadder I am, the more snaps I take looking happy. The more frustrated I am, the more Instagram posts I make about having found balance. I just stay away from Facebook. Even in my deluded depressed state I know I can’t do that to myself. When I was abroad and took a course on the new digital age, we discussed how social media fucks with your mind and makes you believe that you are a) miserable because you are not jet setting around the world like your rich friends, b) not successful because you don’t have your dream job like your white friends, c) that you’re not worthy of love because you’re not engaged like your high school acquaintances and on and on and on. I’m aware. That’s what makes it worse. Being aware that these things are not true because you have studied the affects of something yet still feeling it. My life is not in shambles. This is not “the end” of my success or my journey. It’s just about to begin. I very much believe that. I do. Now I just have to cultivate a routine of sorts to remind myself of that every day so I don’t get swallowed up by this sadness and feeling of unworthiness that is also present (both can and do exist at the same time in the same person). 

Dear Stranger, what do you do to keep the weight of your world from crushing you and breaking you? 

Wishing you and myself mental peace, blessings and good weather

-M