and her ongoing crisis

I’ve been using the term “quarter-life crisis” to sum up all of the confusion tumbling around my life. It had manifested itself in huge white-rimmed glasses, but I changed out of those into clear acrylic frames last week. They’re gorgeous and I love them, and I’ve been asking everyone to praise them. I don’t care what they really think.

But my crisis is a bigger one, although I’m at a stable phase. I am incredibly grateful, but it feels stagnant, and really, it’s no one’s fault if it’s not my own.

I think it’s called activation energy, the push you need to do something out of your routine. Reaching out, doing something new, and you don’t ever feel like doing it, but you have to force yourself. It’s that initial leap that’s hard, but I’m not taking it.

I can’t get myself to take it. I am so terribly demotivated, so I’m just sitting with panic building up inside me, watching as my life languidly passes by. I can’t get myself to take it because although I know what I want, I don’t know how to get it. The path branches into too many, and I am crippled by the fear of taking the wrong one and wasting my time and my effort, but what if the wrong one is the comfort I’m sitting in now? Maybe I have been pushing myself, but not hard enough, considering that there are half-done applications sitting around for weeks waiting to be sent. “They’re not good enough,” I tell myself, but will they ever be good enough? Will they just become good enough if I’ve got no drive to improve them? It seems to be a form of procrastination, a foreign concept to someone who tends to worry months ahead. But it’s a destructive one, procrastinating goals that do not have a deadline, milestones in your life that you want to achieve, but that aren’t scheduled out for you.

And I’ve been comparing myself to others, people of my age and younger. It really is a horrible thing to do to yourself, a reflection of a deeper problem and non-existent self-confidence. It does nothing to your motivation; if anything, it just demotivates you further. Your life is your own timeline, Maryam, and the only person you should compare yourself to is yourself. I know it, but the dread comes in waves, and sometimes you can’t help but take a step back and look at the time you could’ve put elsewhere. But I’ve taken it upon myself never to regret anything. I believe that everything does happen for a reason, and that there is a silver lining in it all, even the time that you might think you’ve wasted.

Am I sad? Maybe. It feels like a combination of sadness and indifference that laces my mornings. If any, it’s that blunt kind of pain, that mundane joyless laughter. I do feel bad for it, because I believe that I’ve got no right to be sad. The feeling of guilt that comes with being sad is wired in me, I guess, and I don’t really know whether that’s a healthy coping mechanism (probably not). I feel alone, too, and vulnerable when I talk about it, even when I’ve done so many times in this blog. There’s a lot that that comes down to, as I’ve said in other posts, but I’m just not willing to change to anything but the better anymore, and I’m tired of considering whether my ‘better’ will be catered by others. Take it or leave it. It’ll heal.

So this is a resolution (if anyone’s still reading this? Hello?). I’ll try my best and keep faith. I’ll do it.

(update: The applications were sent!)