What a title. Very ominous and spooky.
Today Twin asked us, for our last post, to write sort of a last message. I guess a better word to describe this post would be a reflection on basically anything. So I'm going to reflect on my junior year. Looking back at this year, I can honestly say that I survived junior year. I don't think I thrived. It sure as hell wasn't fun. In fact, it was emotionally challenging and completely exhausting. Part of that is my fault-I can be very negative and very stubborn, which essentially translates to I hold onto old hurts and view every situation as something that will hurt me. At the same time, I was dealing with my mental issues-my depression took a very steep turn this year. I got very paranoid, very anxious, and very tired. Of everything. I withdrew a lot, because I couldn't possibly comprehend a situation where I was wanted. Then there were relationship issues-rejection and break ups which to anyone else are a part of life, but that I take very seriously. It really affects me.
So, did it suck? Hell yeah. Does it feel like I wasted a year that could have been spent having fun and being a teenager? Also hell yeah. But did this year lack meaning? Not at all. I think struggles have their own purpose in life. It's not really living unless you are forced to deal with less than perfect situations at times. Clearly no one wants depression or anxiety. But as we saw in the video today, life is full of brick walls.
My brick walls (my mental illnesses) would stop me in my tracks. They would tell me nasty things about myself and make it hard to do basic everyday things (text friends back, do homework, etc). It sucked, but it did not mean I was stuck in my situation. It simply meant that I would have to go a different way to figure things out, and to try and live the best life I could.
I wish I could say that I knew why brick walls exist for me-I don't know what I want to do in life, so I'm not really getting a clear message on what my future should be or what I should do. I'm not all knowing and my life is clearly not all together, so I'm just going to have to speculate on their purpose. My best guess would be that these walls exist for me to prove that I can overcome things. Facing a wall may suck, but being able to get through it? Yeah, that's an exhilarating feeling.
Life, I assume, is based on a lot of challenging moments, that are only worth dealing with because of the few, great chill moments. I can't say this for certain, because I've only been alive for sixteen years. Hell, maybe there's some super cool meaning of life that's revealed when you graduate out of college, because why else would twenty-somethings be so weird?
Lots of things can be overcome. Especially situations that seem way too overwhelming to even be possible. But it is possible. Life is basically a lot of people saying, 'I don't like this situation. So I'm going to change it.' It's how a man who was going to die in six months was able to give a great presentation about life, not death. It's somewhat incredible what people can work themselves through. We need to give ourselves a lot more credit. And we also need to stop worrying about things that we can't control.
Life happens and we can't really stop it. We can't stop the struggles, we can't stop the problems. Things happen no matter how perfect a life may be. It's the attitude that matters.
