anyone else afraid of the real world?
anyone else afraid of the real world?
let's talk about the unexplainable feelings of emptiness you feel post-gradutation, it's spooky season after all!
“You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place... like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again.”
- Azar Nafisi, "Reading Lolita in Tehran"
Ah, October. The season of ghosts, goblins, and ghouls.
In many ways, Autumn has always felt like a season of rebirth, of transformation. It is as cruel as it is beautiful and I can’t help but appreciate its brutality. Yet, as I continue to age, the season has become much more diabolical than I ever expected. It taunts me now, reminding me of what I once had, who I once was, and who I am still searching for.
In the name of confessions, I’ll offer you up one: I’ve never really been afraid of ghosts. After experiencing my fair share of supernatural extremities I find them now to be an odd comfort (I don’t really know what that says about me). In fact, I’ve never really found the traditional idea of ghosts and goblins to be all that terrifying.
It’s the more ambiguous things, the things we can’t really put into words or cage in any sort of physical body, that haunt me. The real world has always seemed scarier in comparsion to anything else: sometimes I get so afraid of what the entire world thinks of me that I struggle to leave the house.
However, it’s been a while since I’ve experienced a true bone-rattling terror that isn’t just my anxiety dressed up in a SCREAM mask. It was a terror that still makes itself known, echoing through my bones, organs, muscles - it seems to have had a lasting effect. I am forever changed because of it.
Let me take you back in time to two years ago. I’ll set the stage: we’re in the middle of a global pandemic (you and I and everyone else on planet Earth), I have just graduated from University and I have no idea what I want to do or who I want to be.
I was simply just there, ready to step into what’s referred to as the real world. The chilling realization that I was suddenly on the edge of this vast, great unknown terrified me.
Let me admit this upfront: I’m not a big fan of change. Most of the time I’m begrudgingly forced towards it, kicking and screaming, never letting it tackle me without a good fight. It is a terrible dance we do, change and I, yet the movements are so ingrained in my body it’s really just muscle memory at this point, and it seemed like change was just waiting for me to graudate so it could spin my entire life upside down.
For so long I had positioned school as a predictable, comforting structure to govern my life by: I nuzzled up in its security.
Each morning I got up and labelled myself a“student”, surrendering to all it encompassed, relieved to not have to claim any other label. Being a student meant I could do and be and say and care about anything, and the real adults would just giggle, recalling their own college glory days.
My interests were seen as intriguing and noble pursuits (they’ve since been demoted to hobbies, things I should only really do outside of working hours), my bizarre sleeping schedule somehow made sense, and when I forgot to buy paper towels for a week it was acceptable. Glorious, isn’t it?
There’s not really a clear transition from student to full-fledged adult, one day you simply graduate and that’s that. You’re on your own.
Graduating marked the triumphant end of what I didn’t realise was one of my favourite chapters. A chapter filled with late-night study sessions, friendships born out of shared adversity, and the invigorating sense of feeling like I was constantly on the brink of potential.
I had been part of a community for the last four years, a community that shared my struggles, my ambition, my sorrows. A community that suddenly dispersed right in front of me.
In an instant I found myself feeling rather exposed to the world. I was alone, expected to walk right into it all as if I was a very adult woman who knew exactly what she wanted and who she was going to become.
The truth, of course, was that I was not a very adult woman: I lacked any real sort of plans, I didn’t have an interest savings account and hell, I still don’t know where to buy a compost bin.
I was a kid, peering over the edge, trying to catch a glimpse of the rest of my life, alone and afraid, having no idea what to do with the rest of my existence. For the first time, I felt a true emptiness.
I no longer had a explicit path to follow, instead, I felt like I walking headfirst into a black hole.
Fast forward to today.
Two years later, and although I’m still scared, it creeps up on me less and less (except on some very bad horrible nights, but we don’t really need to talk about those). Needless to say, I’ve learned some things along the way:
Society standards, although scary, are easy to ignore and bend to your own will. You’ll eventually find yourself surrounded by other people who choose to ignore societal expectations. Stick with them, you’ll need them.
The scariest part isn’t actually figuring out what you want to spend the rest of your time on this planet doing. The actual scary thing is the way your own youth haunts you — it has these insidious ghostly hands. Hands that once acted like a guide but whose presence you feel slowly slipping away with each breath you take. Learn to let go or you’ll struggle to make room for the person you’re growing into.
You will feel lost in a way you’ve never experienced. When I graduated and realised how much change was about to occur in my life, I felt the sudden weight of losing who I was — who I had been up until that point, and it smacked me in the face. I have no advice for this (I’m sorry), it’s a feeling you must grapple with yourself. I can say that on the other side of it you’ll find yourself in a much better place than you started, and usually with a better idea of where you want to go.
I wish I had a big lesson to end this with. I wish I could tell you that in the two short years I’ve been surviving in the real world I somehow learned how to comfortably deal with the crushing weight of morality, but I haven’t.
I have gotten to a point of acceptance over the whole thing though, the best anyone can at 24 (I’m sure I’ll revisit this in my 30s and think hell kid you don’t even know! you’re not even at the beginning of the race, you’re still tying your shoes! this world is curel and unfair and beautiful and so full of love and you haven’t even seen the best of it yet!).
Most importantly though I’ve learned how to not let it swallow me whole every single moment of every single day.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some nights I look in the mirror and wonder if I’ve fucked it all up, if I’m only a couple years into this thing and I’ve made every bad choice imaginable — then I start to wonder if that mean voice in my head is right, what if I am unlovable, unreedemable, and actually what if the world is not my oyster, what if it is just rotting right in front of me and I’m too stupid to notice it. Those nights (my bad, we did bring up those very bad horrible nights afterall) are unavoidable and rotten in nature, but they only last for a moment in the grand scheme of things.
Youth is meant to slip away. Yes, despite our desperate yearning to cling to it, it is meant to depart.
It doesn’t truly ever leave us though. I still carry the younger version of myself inside my hollows of my body, and sometimes I do things just for her, like dancing to One Direction at midnight in my room, or eating ice cream for breakfast just because I can.
Those small things remind me that in the end everything I do is to please me, to make me happy, to live a life that makes me satisfied. I’m not here to cater to some imaginary all-knowing creature known as society.
I think if I’m able to make 5-year-old me happy, the rest will be okay.
WEEPING UNDER THE WILLOW TREES OF MY YOUTH, DID YOU THINK I WOULD BECOME MORE (i did, i definitely did) AND ARE YOU DISAPPOINTED I AM JUST A SAD LITTLE GIRL (i am, i definitely am)? I COULD HAVE BEEN MORE YOU KNOW, I COULD HAVE BEEN MORE THAN YOU THOUGHT POSSIBLE BUT I AM NOT AND I AM SORRY THAT I STAINED YOUR CARPET WITH RED WINE THAT NIGHT AND YOU STAYED UP WITH ME UNTIL 3AM CLEANING IT WHILE I CRIED ON YOUR SOFA ABOUT HOW HARD IT IS TO BE IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE THAT DOES NOT WANT YOU. YOU TOLD ME THEN TO SMARTEN UP, THAT FALLING IN LOVE WITH SOMEONE WHO WOULDN’T CARE IF YOU LIVED OR DIED IS A FOOL’S GAME AND I AM NOT A FOOL. BUT I AM (i most certainly am) A FOOL.
BUT I DEFINITELY COULD HAVE BEEN MORE.
i want to be more, Sierra Madison
I supposed I already served up some wisdom today but I always keep room for dessert. Let’s keep it short and sweet, shall we?
Worry less about all the choices you could have made. It will do you good to stop thinking about who you would have been if you did this instead of that — focus instead on accepting who you are now and give yourself some grace to sway to the tune of your being, without judgment or shame.
I have a funny feeling you’ll become the exact type of person you’d adore if you just listened to yourself sometimes (and no, yourself is not all the mean ugly voices in your head, yourself is your body and mind and heart and being who want nothing than for you to feel seen and safe and loved).
I also feel the need to include this here, though I don’t know if it consitutes as wisdom, but this is my newsletter so I’ll let it slide. I’ve found that graudating is sort of like being forced into signing up for a recreational sports league.
Like the real world, recreational sports leagues are expensive and come with a strict set of rules:
Be a team player
No shoving or kicking or spitting or swearing at other players
All players must wear the required uniform
Always, most definitely, absolutely be on time (the game will start with or without you, and there’s nothing more embarrassing than having to sit on the sidelines watching strangers play a game you barely understand — at that point you’re there so you might as well play)
My advice, don’t sign up for a recreational sports league if you’re already struggling exsiting in the real world. **
** please note this advice is bias as the writer crashed and failed publically after being forced into a rec soccer league immediately after graduating, readers should be aware that there are immense benefits to particpating in recreational sport leagues and they can provide a real sense of community, be a great form of exercise, and can connect you with people that share similiar interests
I recently watched this short film nothing, except everything. by Wesley Wang and to say it punched me in the gut would be an understatement. He does a beautiful job of capturing the feeling of realising you’re right in the middle of the “good ol’ days” while simultaneously having no clue what to do next.
Find this month’s moodboard here, apologies for the moodiness, but c’mon, October is a moody son of a bitch.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this month’s edition of Confessions of a 20-Something. I encourage you to share this with your close friends if you feel like it’s the kind of thing they’d be into.
If you’ve received this from a friend and want to join me on the adventure that is navigating your 20s, subscribe to the newsletter below.
If you want to read more of my writing or just want to see what’s going on in my life, you can find me on Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok.
Until next month …