OUT OF CONTROL

I feel out of control, I feel crazed and reckless. I am two weeks from graduating, just two assignments away from my degree. My life is spinning out of my control, my path is unclear yet everything now is my own decision-making. I'm trying to cope and control what I can. I spent hundreds of dollars on things I didn't really need, I cleaned for hours on end and threw out half of my things. I pick at my scalp and acne.

What am I supposed to do with my life? I'm no longer depressed but I've developed anxiety, my chest is tight all the time and sometimes I can't breathe. Everyone is leaving and suddenly I'm an adult. I feel too young, I don't feel ready. Time won't stop even as I beg it. I'm not coping with change. I want to cry but I can't; the tears tucked away.

I'm doing my best to keep my grip on reality but I don't know what I'm feeling and nothing makes sense. I leave no time to think, I just hyper-fixate and refuse to face what I'm worrying about. How do I process, how do I make myself feel? What am I scared of? How can I deal?

The news makes me sad and the days keep passing. I need to keep moving and I must stay busy. Maybe what's best for me is to distract and distract.

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Hi, hello!

I haven't felt very inspired lately, partly because I'm busy and partly because I am not giving myself the space to sit down, think and really process what I want to write about. As you may have noticed, I've stopped my monthly wrap-ups but here is a small list of recommendations. These are the brilliant things I've consumed lately.

1. Hello beautiful by Ann Napolitano

2. How high we go in the dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

3. On Earth we're briefly gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

4. Women talking (movie)

5. How to have sex (movie)

Anyway, how am I you ask? Well despite - as I explained above - my uncanny ability to refuse to process or cope with change, I am doing okay. I have my last week of lectures (spoilers, I haven't been attending for weeks), and I go to the gym regularly now (for those who know me well, this is big). I am writing to you in the afternoon on a mental health day because it was definitely needed. The election is this weekend and thinking about the outcome makes me want to cry (p.s. go vote). Checking my phone is making me uncomfortable and angry. I'm numbing myself with grey's anatomy and the bursts of serotonin I get momentarily every time I make a purchase. It's my birthday in less than a month and it's marking the end of life as I have known it. My friends are visiting soon, I am celebrating soon, I am going on holiday soon, I am starting a full-time corporate job soon, my americans are leaving soon, my best friend is moving soon, my brother is an adult soon, everything is happening soon. As I mourn, as I'm scared, I am also cautiously excited. I don't want to be left behind but I am ready to grow. I am ready to put myself out there and become the person I want to be. But I feel a deep sense of longing for this life that is changing, that I have loved, that I have hated but that I have loved. I love the freedom, I love my home, I love the people I've met, I love being a short flight away, I love the learning, I love my life and I'm holding on to it because I am scared that I will not love the next chapter of my life as much. That I will always mourn the person I was and the life that I had, that I will mourn my presence in people's lives as they grow and change without me. I will mourn the freedom I had, what if I never experience that again? I always thought I was an optimist but right now I'm not sure I can claim that title.

As I write, the pang in my chest is making it harder to breathe. I should probably go but I have so much more to say. But instead, I'll just leave you with this -"every history has more than one thread, every thread a division." Every new path we take is a deviation from the old and each change requires letting go. The divide can be expansive, fragmented and distant. To some, these changes will leave me fixed in time, to others, be sure to hold my hand from across our lifelines.

p.p.s - the photo is me on the day I moved into my flat, one that I am moving out in the new year, a little full circle moment one may say.