Life Lately
HI! It’s been a minute since I’ve posted a blog post. I wanted to talk about where I am in life lately. Let’s start with the boring day-to-day parts of the conversation. Yes, I still work at Target. It pays the bills. Yes, I am still in school. I have a semester and a half left until my bachelor’s degree. I am so excited to have my bachelor’s degree. Yes, I still live in Utah.
Okay, now that all of that is out in the open, let’s get to the good stuff: emotions! Let me describe how I have been feeling lately. Do you know that feeling when it’s been snowing for days, and it stops and so you walk outside of your house, and it’s sunny and feels warm and the bulk of the snow has melted?? Or that feeling you have when you’ve been in a daze and suddenly, you realize that you are real and breathing and your senses are heightened??
Let me paint you one more picture: Imagine you have been lost at sea for days, months, maybe even years. Then one night, you have this terrible storm at sea. One so bad that your boat breaks and you’re thrown out to sea. You think “This is it” as you try to tread water, but nobody ever taught you how to swim, and so you begin to sink. Everything goes black, and when you wake up, you are suddenly on a beach. The sun is shining bright, and you gasp for air. You think that you died, and you get up to question if this is what heaven is like. Then you realize that you can breathe. You are alive. You are on land. You survived. This is how I’ve been feeling lately.
Obviously, not as dramatic, but I do love to paint a picture of words, and so I couldn’t resist a bit of metaphor. This is the way that I have been describing my feelings to my therapist though. The year 2023, was a hard year for me personally. It brought with it a lot of growth opportunities, and I learned a lot about myself. Towards the end of 2023, something clicked and everything just didn’t matter as much.
Not to say that I stopped caring about things, because trust me, I care about a lot of things. Some could even say that I care too much. I just realized that I was caring about the wrong things, and I stopped caring about the most important things. I got caught up in the day-to-day. I didn’t have any goals, dreams, or ambitions. One could say that I was in survival mode. Which, while necessary sometimes, does not sustain over long periods of time. This can be seen in many studies done on the long-term effects of fight or flight aka adrenaline and cortisol.
But, I’m not here to talk about the storm. I’m here to talk about the beach, the sky, the air, etc. Something clicked in me and I started to build myself a beach. I’ve built boundaries and routines that bring me joy. I’ve started healthy habits. I can’t tell you how freeing this is. I’ve never cared less in my whole life! This sounds bad, but as a raging perfectionist (personal with OCD) and someone who has spent so much time caring about what other people think, this is a big step.
**Cue The 1 by Taylor Swift**
So in conclusion, I am at so much peace. To make a long story short: I am at peace with my mission. I am at peace with the LDS church. I am at peace with being gay. I am at peace with being in school. I am at peace with where I am. I have good days and bad days, but life goes on, and that is beautiful. I have boundaries. I’ve cut out negative people. I have dreams and ambitions again. I would say that I am happy, but happiness is fleeting and short-term. I am at peace… on my beach… by myself… and I am perfectly okay with that.
