2022. another trip round the sun. another attempt to make sense of the maelstrom that is my life. another endless series of trainwrecks with only brief commercial break-like moments of happiness. let’s talk about my 23rd trip round the sun.
you know when people say “work out. it’ll help your mental health”? yeah, they lied. i’m on an eight-month streak on the nike training club app and i have been waiting for the mental health benefits to kick in (what an inability to afford therapy does to a mf). will i stop? no. partly because this working out shit might be good, and partly because “streak-brain” has been activated and i refuse to let it die; kinda like my duolingo streak (over 700 days, baby).
an alarmingly large number of my friends are getting in relationships. add to that the number of “she said yes” and “the families of…” and i’m starting to think maybe there’s a deadline that no one told me about. so, i’ve had a touch of “girlfriend fever”. in what was a personal best for me, i was shot down five times by four different girls, bringing my lifetime total to a chilling 0 for 7. not gonna lie, i’m starting to think i’m the defective one. and the crushing loneliness is starting to take its toll.
in a year where most of my friends celebrated all kinds of shit (passing the bar, getting jobs, etc.), i find myself on the outside looking in once again. it can be a frustrating feeling. lucky for me, my friends are real great people and understand that my feeling that way does not in any way detract from my happiness for them. it just would have been nice if i was on the other side with them.
how do you navigate uncertainty? the older i get (i say older like i’m not just 23), the more that question bothers me. see, i like knowing what happens. i like being in control (it’s a coping mechanism). but, this past year i’ve been in situations that i didn’t know how they’d end. from my decision to apply for altschool africa (we’re trying to be software devs), to my (what feels like) eternally deteriorating relationship with both my parents, i feel like i keep going further and further into the breach with nary a save point in sight. something that’s helped with this is movies. i had a “bucket list” of movies to watch through, as well as the entire animated movie catalogue for Disney Animation and Pixar. at best, it helps me combat my anxiety about the uncertain and unknown. at worst, it’s a handy distraction (and i’ve needed distractions).
soon, we’d have come to the end of the year. an eventfully uneventful year, the only resolution i managed to keep was my working out resolution. a year of firsts, i got my first job (and lost it). i had a panic attack in front of my father for the first (and only) time. i started and caught up with daredevil. i have fought battles that i can scarcely remember during this paradoxically long and short year. i have tried (and failed) to overcome my aversion to cameras and the outside. i have tried (and failed) to find a way to not go through life alone (it can be soberingly painful). maybe i give up and stop trying. wave the white flag and call it done. maybe. but until then, we’re gonna do this the only way we know how: with maximum effort.
hasta luego.
