I wish I had known that no amount of time spent working toward perfection could change the fact that I don’t have full control over my own life. By all measurements and standards I had been presented with throughout my life, my first twenty-one years were a success story. I had made lots of friends growing up, tried many hobbies and sports, made good grades, went to church, and had a great relationship with my family. College went just as well; I graduated in three years with a major and double minor, conducted undergraduate research with my favorite professor, studied abroad in Europe, joined a sorority, held two on-campus jobs, and upheld a riotous social life. As the spring semester of my last year in college started, I knew I was living in some of the best days of my life. Each day during that time, I accomplished meaningful work and interacted with some of my favorite people and did so in perfect awareness that I was basking in the golden splendor of my own life. And of course everything was exactly the way I wanted—I had planned everything out, considered every detail, and did everything right.
And then, as we all know, COVID-19 came along and everything went to shit. I had dealt with bouts of situational depression before. I pushed myself too hard sophomore year of high school and cried a lot until the event that was stressing me out passed. I had a summer internship that completely drained me after freshman year of college, then I read a philosophical book and got over it. This was completely different. I was flung into a new house that my parents had just moved to and stripped of my friends, boyfriend, last college semester, countless hobbies that kept me busy, the job I had lined up after college, and the sense that I had any control whatsoever of my life. Cue the depression and newfound anxiety.
With all the control I exercised over my life and the pressure I put on myself to do everything right, I always knew a breakdown was imminent—I just expected it to look a lot more like Eat Pray Love. I wanted to question the worth of my accomplishments while stuffing myself with Italian cuisine, not cry on the floor of my mom’s office as she tried to get me to take a single bite of toast. I wanted to feel freedom as I finally learned to enjoy spontaneity in life, not wonder if I would ever feel like myself again as I curled myself around the toilet bowl in constant anxiety-induced nausea. I wanted to wake up excited for each day like I used to, not count the hours until I could finally go to sleep again. But reality had finally slapped me in my face, and I finally had to come to terms that I had, in fact, done everything right and it didn’t matter. I still wasn’t happy. I still wasn’t where I wanted to be. I finally admitted to myself I needed help, not just to learn how to be happy again, but to learn how to deal with the fact that all my control over my life was stripped away from me, and that it was maybe an illusion to begin with.
Five months of Lexapro, two months of teletherapy, countless mental breakdowns, and a lot of hard work later, I’m doing a lot better. I live in a new city where I have a new job and I’m once again happy and excited about the trajectory of my life. I have work and friends to keep me busy again, but I’m no longer gasping for air from the overwhelming amount of pressure I’ve put on myself my entire life. I’m working on being happy with my life as it is currently is. I’m realizing that my life is never going to be exactly what I plan it to be. I’m trying to lay myself open to “the benign indifference of the universe” as good old Camus once said. And it has been a lot of hard work and it has sucked, but it has also been like a breath of fresh air. Although I realized that I don’t have full control over my own life, I also realized that this means there’s not really any merit to doing everything right. What does ‘doing everything right’ even mean anyway? So I’m open to making mistakes now, to doing everything the way I want to instead of the way that will put me ahead in life, which seems like a more sustainable option should everything fall apart again.
Submitted by Paige Stevens
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