As a 22-almost-23-year old, I have just enough experience to give me stories and plenty of naïveté to have no fucking clue as to what I’m talking about. Just enough pizzaz to make me dangerously obnoxious…in a wise way. I’ve officially coexisted with depression and anxiety for five years, I’ve dealt with sexual assault and abusive friendships, and I’m in a relationship that I see as one of those rare first/last everything kinda deals. At the same time…I don’t know heartbreak and I have lived a pretty cushy life with parents who are still together and provide me with everything I’ve ever wanted and more. From some perspectives I have no place to complain about anything in my life, no matter how superficial. From others, including my own, I am not one who has experienced unimaginable hardships and I do not compare my life to those starving children in Africa that are often held over your head as a child who doesn’t like vegetables. As someone with depression, it is unfair to belittle your pain, emotions, despairs and fears because someone somewhere is having a life one billion times worse than the single most terrible second of your own life. There will always be someone out there who is suffering, but that doesn’t make your suffering less important.
My mentor taught me something that I try to remind myself daily: “Sometimes other’s feelings aren’t our work.” That’s not to say, “Fuck everyone else, I’m the only one whose feelings matter,” but rather, “My emotional well-being is slightly more important than others, because I am the one who lives my life and I can only heal others if I first start healing myself.” As a natural empath, I absorb the pain and emotions from those I hold dear. My first instinct is to try to take their pain away, because it hurts to see them hurt. It took a long time to start acting like a sponge and not dry wood: to then wring out others’ pain after I have absorbed it so it does not affect my own mental health, rather than sucking up all of their emotions only to let it poison me from not letting go. I’m a work in progress, but then so are you.
Moving on to the purpose of this post: I have no idea where my life is headed. I went to college pursuing an art degree. I graduated with a BFA with a photography concentration, a minor in Spanish and another minor in Art History. In the real world, that pretty much means diddly squat. Before I graduated, I loved photographing people and capturing the inherent beauty of the human form. A few months after graduation, I get a job at a family portrait company and I thought I found my dream job. My anxiety gets in the way, I end up resigning, and I’m now a low-level manager at a retail store. I get enough hours to be just around the maximum hour requirements to remain at Part-Time, and I consistently question if I want to have a career in photography because I’m afraid that working in a medium I love will spoil it. Within a year, I’ve gone from wanting my own studio in ten years to doubting my entire career path. I’m throwing up my hands asking, “what ELSE am I even good at?” because all I can do is carry a rough conversation in Spanish and write OK scholarly papers. They don’t prepare you for the real world in school, especially for those of us seeking higher education in a field that’s kind of a crap shoot. You’re either ‘in’ with the good connections and find your niche in a gallery or industry, or you’re a starving artist who has a day job to pay the bills.
I went on a hike with my boyfriend yesterday with my camera and the kit zoom lens it came with, and I had fun photographing the nature as we went along the trail. I though I took some great photos, but when I looked at them on my laptop they are not nearly as sharp as I had hoped. My camera has limited capability in how far you can push its high detail and sensitivity to light, which I got spoiled on from the professional-quality cameras we used at school. Even when I get excited to take photos for fun, I get disappointed because the quality ruins a fairly good picture (or at least an attempt at one). I don’t have the money nor the budgeting skills to buy a better camera (or even a better lens for the one I have), and it’s frustrating to see something you used to be passionate about slowly swirl down the drain. I have no idea what I’m good at, I’m scared of people (especially strangers), and I don’t have a Go Get’em attitude because I have low confidence. If there was a job I could do at home without human interaction that could give me enough money to do the things I wanted, that’d be a dream and a half. Clearly it’s just a dream, we can’t earn what we don’t work for. Every night by the time I get home from work, I’m repeating my “I hate people” mantra over and over in my head. I understand why retail makes people so bitter and sad. On top of that, dealing with the pulsing aftermath of dealing with self-repressed memories of traumatic experiences (with the help of a therapist) only makes everyday things feel more daunting. Numbness, lack of focus, my thoughts flittering around like a swarm of hummingbirds on crack in a cloud of confusing gas. I can’t even make my daily practices consistent because of my inability to instate and repeat a routine on my own. Since the beginning of this post I’ve lost my direction of where this was going to end. I guess I’ll just stop here for now.
Still breathing. Trying to stay grounded.
Finding Stability: Grounding Amidst the Chaos 