Almost 25yo Tries to Figure It Out

I'm just trying to find out whether I can still write. There's that and also trying to make word pictures and concrete thoughts from the abstract feelings and ideas all swimming and fighting for space in my head. A good number of things happened in the very recent past and my brain has been fighting for ways to make sense of all of it.

I'm trying not to sound melodramatic but I unfortunately am not succeeding thus far. If it is anyway implied in the last three sentences, I'd just like to clear some possible misreadings of this post. There has been no breakup, no grave illness, nor God forbid, no death to set this off. I quit my job less than 20 days ago. Well, I guess that just kills all potential excitement of this post.

I know that's trivial for most, not a show stopper for anyone. It's just that this decision came at a point in my life when everything feels so tentative. I've never felt so out in the cold like this, ever. I feel like everything is rushing towards me and I am too surprised to do anything.

All these feelings of uncertainty have, of course, a lot to do with the decision to quit my job. But I think this has more to do with turning 25 and living with the expectations, both real and imagined, from a grown woman, a real adult. I feel so pressured to clean up, to live a manicured glossy life, to live like the people on my TV shows.

I don't even know who sets the rules but somehow I am bound by it. Maybe all the thinking is magnifying the thoughts. As it is always said, "what you focus on grows". And just as my brain is on this overdrive, my brain chooses to see colleagues getting married, old classmates raising children, people my age jetsetting all over, meeting important people, pursuing their passion with so much certainty, cleaning up so well -- and in my head, just pretty much doing things I am not doing and looking like they've got it all figured out.

I know a huge chunk of all these thoughts are assumptions my brain has chosen to make to support my theories and may or may not be true. The pressure can be both real or just imagined. But either way, it's eating at me and it's feeding on my paranoia. I want to talk about it with someone but I'd propbably have no idea what to say.

Now I feel this compelling need to run away from it all. But now, unlike a bad teacher in college whose class I can just skip, there's no skipping this one. The pressure just nags at me until I actually know what to do with it. The thing is, I don't know what to do with it.

It may be at the very very back of my mind, but I know these are but roabumps on the journey and that this has a happy ending. But this hope is somehow overpowered by the mob rule in my head that is irrational thinking. I know I'm supposed to enjoy the journey so that the happy ending is sweeter but my stubborn brain refuses to relent and still chooses to flail around and panic.

I wish I could get a sneak preview into my next three years, know that by then all THIS has been worth it, that then all my fears were assuaged and dealt with. But I can't so I have to descipline my brain to JUST BELIEVE that it will all work out in the end.

The tunnel may be long but there is definitely the light at the end of it will be beautiful. REPEAT UNTIL BRAIN UNDERSTANDS.