February.24
The hardest part of a transitional phase is accepting that you’re about to go through one.
When I first went to six flags as a kid in the early 2000’s, I was excited. I was excited as I brushed my teeth that morning, I was excited as I sat through that hour and a half drive over and I was absolutely ecstatic when the blue-haired, teenage employee begrudgingly gave me an official welcome into the park.
But then I got buckled into Tatsu, a ride that pumps you up to a height of 170 feet at a speed of 62 miles an hour. You know when rides make that “Please, keep all arms and legs inside the moving vehicle at all times” message? Yeah, nah. You’re faced down, limbs totally just dangling in mid-air. It’s wild.
Anyway, my point is that the same feeling you get as a kid when the coaster slowly starts making it’s trip up that lift and you realize there’s no turning back is the same feeling you get as a twenty-something who has just hit yet another transitional phase in their life.
It’s a feeling of desperately not wanting something to happen but knowing it’ll happen anyway.
It’s a feeling of dread. Of fear.
It’s anxiety.
Anxiety is what I feel when my friends don’t feel like my friends anymore. What I feel when my grades absolutely suck and I feel like I chose the wrong major. What I feel when I suddenly don’t like where I live anymore. What I feel when I can’t get a freaking text back in a timely manner, J E E Z! The list can go on and on.
Don’t worry, this isn’t where I give my whole “cocoon into a butterfly” spiel. But this is where I tell you that I think we just need to learn how to accept.
Honestly, maybe we aren’t going through the same things. There may even be some of you thinking, ahem—wrong major? Couldn’t be me, I was born to be a dental hygienist. In which case I’d like to say congrats! So glad to hear you got it all figured out bestie! /s
However, I think regardless of what kind of circumstances life is throwing the rest of us, we can all benefit from a good ol’ chill pill. Things will always get a little tough, they’ll suck for a while, I'm sure there’ll even be times we’ll straight out feel bummed for no reason at all. This is when you need to remember what you felt like getting off that roller coaster as a kid...that energy, that adrenaline and all that eagerness to get back on and give it all another shot.
