CW // mentioned depression and suicidal thoughts
When I was younger, I always thought I knew what I wanted. I always thought that life is gonna be easy as long as you plan things thoughtfully. But growing up, I realized that my younger self was full of shit and I really wanted to punch her for thinking that “life is easy”.
Recently I have been fed up by my own thoughts about life. I almost finish my study and I am expected to graduate from university next year — sooner if possible, but I still don’t know what I’m gonna do next. You see, the thing about graduating from university is it’s not the same as graduating from school. When you graduate from elementary school, your focus is just to get in to the best middle school in town. And same goes with middle school and high school. When you graduate from middle or high school, all you have to do is try to get into the best school or university there is.
But when you finish your study at university, you realize that the world is so big. There are so many things you can do after graduation. You can straight up look for jobs — sending applications to everyone that’s hiring, you can continue your studies (if you think you haven’t had enough learning or you don’t want to face the fact that you’re a proper adult who needs to work just yet), or perhaps you can just do… nothing. Just chill. Relax for a moment. Take a trip to places you’ve always wanted to visit and post the pictures online to make your friends jealous.
And the problem with me now is that: I don’t know what I want to do after graduating.
I feel overwhelmed whenever someone comes up to me and cheerfully asks, hey, what’s your plan after graduating? and if I’m being honest, my answer to that is, oh, just trying to keep the bullet away so it doesn’t go straight to my brain!
I don’t always like my life — I kind of hate it actually. It’s not because I have a really shitty life that I wish things were different — well, I kinda do have a shitty life, or maybe it’s just me being an ungrateful little bitch again. But the thing is, if I could change my life, I would.
Now, the question that probably appears in your head is, what do you want to change and how would it make you feel if it were different?
The answer to that question would be: I don’t know.
I just don’t know. I don’t know if me hating this life right now is because I actually hate it, or is it because I don’t have anything else to do. I don’t know what is it about this life that I complain so much that I wish things were different. I just wish every night that I want to live my life the way I want.
And whenever I feel this way, I always remember a quote from BoJack Horseman that says,
Well, that’s a problem with life, right? Either you know what you want and you don’t get what you want, or get what you want and you don’t know what you want.
At first, I thought, that’s unfair, isn’t it? Why can’t we get what we want? Aand as I was writing this, I remembered that song by The Smiths;
Oh for once in my life, let me, let me, let me, let me get what I want this time.
As if this is an amen to what Diane from the show BoJack Horseman said above.
But then I realized that that’s just how life is. Life is unfair and it always will be, so we might as well just try to accept that maybe it’s just how life works — not that I know well how it works. I’m still confused with a lot of things. I’m still learning about how this world actually works and what can I do to make my life feels a little worth living. And trust me, it’s not easy.
I just turned 22 last Friday and one quote that keeps popping in my head the whole day is that Taylor Swift’s song Nothing New;
How can a person know everything at 18, but nothing at 22?
I think a lot about that quote because when I was younger, I used to know a lot of things — or at least that’s what I thought. There were even times when I was so depressed that I thought about the time when it felt like I knew everything. People used to compliment me, saying flattering things like how brilliant I was, and how they liked the way I thought. And I honestly miss that time. It made me feel good about myself at that time.
As I grew older, I struggled with depression, still is. My head is filled with suicidal thoughts and ways to kill myself. I was so down and I couldn’t stop wondering what happened to me. I was such a “bright” kid, but now the light in me is shut down. So I spent the past couple of years wondering what happened to me and of course, that quote from Nothing New was always there.
But on my birthday, I realized something: I was not supposed to have everything figured out by the age of 22.
So I tried to look at that quote from another point of view that maybe — just maybe, it’s about how adulting works. When we were in our teenage time, we thought that we knew everything — about our lives, about our careers, about our purposes, about how things work and how they affect us; we thought we had everything figured out — just as I said earlier in this post that teenage-me thought that “life is easy” — but of course, we don’t know shit. By that age, we haven’t figured out anything. That’s why maybe when we grow older we think that we used to know everything when we were younger, when in fact we were just being some pretentious teenagers.
I think a lot of people are lost in their 20s because if not, I wouldn’t find a list of films on Letterboxd titled “feeling lost in your 20s”. So if you are also in your 20s and you feel lost just like me, I just wanna say that, I think we’re fine. You are not alone because there are a lot of people who are lost too and I think it’s kinda good that we’re lost together. And I guess I can understand the confusion and the fear of being in your 20s because a lot of things are constantly going on in your life and the responsibility is getting bigger and heavier; not to mention the expectations people are throwing at you. So yeah, I totally understand the anxiety and the fear.
Because I think being in your early 20s is the transition years from your teenage years to adulthood. Whether you like it or not, there are going to be a lot of things thrown at you and you have to learn a lot of things at the same time and I know it can be really stressful and overwhelming because I am experiencing it now too, but the thing is, we’re fine; we will be.
We’re not supposed to have to figure everything out at the age of 22, let alone 18. This is the time we ought to be confused — to try new things and be confused, to make mistakes so we can learn a lesson or two. This is the time we ought to live our life to the fullest; to do the things we always wanted, to try new hobbies, to meet new people, to be in love, to run as far as our legs are capable of, to dance, to make memories.
Maybe it’s the life I always wanted and I should try to live it.
