T-4 Days Until Departure
Today, I received an email requesting that I take a survey on my mental health and the available health and wellness resources in Paris.
I must mention that I am currently a sophomore in college, about to embark on my first (and perhaps only) semester abroad.
I still have not opened the email. Part of it is because I am still on break and don't want to deal with responsibilities –– the other part being that everything that concerns my health (especially mental) terrifies me. Without being too explicit, this past semester has been particularly trying for me. There were too many health scares: have I lost too much weight? Am I eating okay? Am I exercising too much? Am I taking my vitamins? Am I, at twenty years old, shedding too much hair?
I have figured out that this is adulthood. Adulthood is about worrying about everything, and this will only increase the older I get and the more responsibilities I have.
Lately, I've been reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney and, although she came much recommended, I cannot help but feel on edge, like if I were reading a thriller. I feel rattled, unsettled. Perhaps this novel hits too close to home for me (for reasons I won't even bother explaining).
The novel is a coming-of-age story for one Frances, a 21-year-old university student who engages in an extramarital affair with a man ten years older than her. One passage, in particular, stood out to me and inspired me to start writing again. Rooney writes, "I was going through a second upbringing: learning a new set of assumptions, and feigning a greater level of understanding than I really possessed" (228).
Perhaps what is unsettling me, rattling me, what is making me on edge, is adulthood. It's the knowing that I can't rely on mommy and daddy to tell me everything is going to be okay, and blindly believing that, because they have said this, perhaps everything will truly be okay.
I am entering adulthood, and as much as I would like to, I can't really run off to mommy and daddy every time my anxiety takes ahold of me. I am eating, I am exercising, I'm taking my vitamins, I'm doing well in my classes. What is going wrong?
I head off to Paris in 4 days, where mommy and daddy would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to calm me down, so I figured this would be an amazing opportunity to journal my experience away in another country, where I don't know the language, where I don't know where my mental health stands, where I'm afraid for my own physical wellbeing, where I hope to God I won't be alone throughout all of my problems. I hope to travel across Europe and I will be constantly in classes, learning new things, talking to new people –– I hope this won't be a repeat of the summer.
I will be trying my best to journal and write everything down, so here's to hopefully not losing the password to this account this time!
I must mention that I am currently a sophomore in college, about to embark on my first (and perhaps only) semester abroad.
I still have not opened the email. Part of it is because I am still on break and don't want to deal with responsibilities –– the other part being that everything that concerns my health (especially mental) terrifies me. Without being too explicit, this past semester has been particularly trying for me. There were too many health scares: have I lost too much weight? Am I eating okay? Am I exercising too much? Am I taking my vitamins? Am I, at twenty years old, shedding too much hair?
I have figured out that this is adulthood. Adulthood is about worrying about everything, and this will only increase the older I get and the more responsibilities I have.
Lately, I've been reading Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney and, although she came much recommended, I cannot help but feel on edge, like if I were reading a thriller. I feel rattled, unsettled. Perhaps this novel hits too close to home for me (for reasons I won't even bother explaining).
The novel is a coming-of-age story for one Frances, a 21-year-old university student who engages in an extramarital affair with a man ten years older than her. One passage, in particular, stood out to me and inspired me to start writing again. Rooney writes, "I was going through a second upbringing: learning a new set of assumptions, and feigning a greater level of understanding than I really possessed" (228).
Perhaps what is unsettling me, rattling me, what is making me on edge, is adulthood. It's the knowing that I can't rely on mommy and daddy to tell me everything is going to be okay, and blindly believing that, because they have said this, perhaps everything will truly be okay.
I am entering adulthood, and as much as I would like to, I can't really run off to mommy and daddy every time my anxiety takes ahold of me. I am eating, I am exercising, I'm taking my vitamins, I'm doing well in my classes. What is going wrong?
I head off to Paris in 4 days, where mommy and daddy would have to cross the Atlantic Ocean to calm me down, so I figured this would be an amazing opportunity to journal my experience away in another country, where I don't know the language, where I don't know where my mental health stands, where I'm afraid for my own physical wellbeing, where I hope to God I won't be alone throughout all of my problems. I hope to travel across Europe and I will be constantly in classes, learning new things, talking to new people –– I hope this won't be a repeat of the summer.
I will be trying my best to journal and write everything down, so here's to hopefully not losing the password to this account this time!
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