This post is not about my trip to Thailand; in fact, I probably won’t write an article solely about my trip abroad because there’s a million of those out there and quite frankly my experience probably wasn’t much different than the many many millennials that frequent the country and it’s surrounding islands anyway. What I will do is talk about it in the greater context of my last year, my last 6 months, my last two months all leading to here.
I’ve had this blog for five years next month and while I can’t pretend to know everything about being in your twenties, I’d like to think over the course of these five years I’ve become a stronger person, a better writer, and a more relatable human being in general. I feel the growth with every passing year and the unfolding and discovery of myself has led me to understand a lot more things than I did in my early and mid twenties. In the past year I’ve increased my Salary by 40% (I fucking kid you not), I dealt with the wedding of my mother and the new family dynamics that entails, I moved from a space that didn’t fit me to a place I’m happy to call home, have gone through work drama that left me more humble than ever before and I uncovered the key triggers behind my insecure attachment style when it comes to relationships. You’re thinking “wow!” right? How do you do all of that in a year and come out on the other side? I’m a millennial in my twenties and it feels like those kind of success are too overwhelming for me to handle alongside day to day life.”
To be fair, in writing it sounds easier than it really was. There were multiple situations and experiences where I had no idea how I was going to get out of them. In many instances my ego, and the reality of my own insecurities made me feel like, at any moment my whole life could just crumble. The funny thing is, I’ve experienced so much in my twenties that truly could have broken me and instead of breaking me each situation lit a match inside me that has only grown. My resilience to set backs burns brighter, the principles I value has guided me in every thing I do, and who I am is so strong it outshines everything else. I have learned to be fearless in the face of overwhelming obstacles, steadfast in my own worthiness, determined to grow up, fix myself, face my demons. When shit gets real it forces you to be that type of person, it forces you to believe in my motto, ” No one has ever said, ‘and then it just never worked out’.
Some might call that faith – in my mind it can be whatever you want to call it, but at its core it’s about knowing who you are when shit hits the fan. That person who brings out the very best, and sometimes, the very worst of who we are in a crisis. When things get real can you call upon that version of yourself, the part of you who, regardless of the situation you trust to figure out what to do? Because, like I said, it’s not about what you believe in, what coping mechanisms and family upbringing you’ve grown to depend on in those anxiety inducing, overwhelming moments. In the moments where the puzzle pieces of your life feel so disconnected and nothing makes sense you think to yourself, “God, I hate my twenties” do you lean on things to get you through or do you rely on the only person who drives your life – you?
I missed my flight on the way back from Thailand. In an otherwise mostly enjoyable trip my poor planning led to me missing my flight by over an hour and I was left scrambling in another country, with limited options, in a packed Bangkok airport where I didn’t speak the language at midnight. After some mild tears in the face of a checkout girl, (which yielded nothing) an angry call with an customer service rep, and a last ditch effort to catch my plane laid over for 8 hours in Kunming, China, I was left with very few options to get home. My mother, worried but determined to let me figure it out, had honestly never felt so useless. This is not a negative thing, in fact it made it even more clear that I needed to pull myself together and depend on myself to get back home. Hungry, tired, sweaty and defeated at 3am I sat on a bench, cradled my head in my hands with tears streaming down my face and sat there for 5 minutes. People bustled by me and all my luggage and yet I had never felt more alone. I was jobless and more than 8000 miles from home and the idea of being stuck in a foreign country literally terrified me. Then, after exactly 5 minutes those matches started to burn my insides. I knew exactly what to do and with a million concerns for how I was going to pull off spending an unexpected $800 dollars fell away. Every trauma, every difficult moment I knew had equipped me to handle, literally anything and it was with that thought I got up, bought a ticket, and made it home.
It took me three days mind you, and a lot of thinking about being the best version of myself, the adult version, the one who understood that everything is always okay no matter what it looks like on the surface and despite the fact that I have pretty active anxiety and what I like to call “remission depression”. I don’t talk about my mental illness enough but that’s part of me too, apart of me that is has been in survival mode for the past five year, the part of me that brought myself here, in the life I live now. It is nothing short of a miracle because three years ago I almost died, to come back from that, to see where it all lead to and not feel utterly grateful is a slap in the face to myself.
In this moment in time the world feels on the precipice of shifting entirely, society is changing, systems are crumbling, we are all connected and disconnected at the same time. Our faith in our democracy and the injustice of that democracy towards vast constituencies labeled as “other” is weak and waiting to be exposed and rebuilt. It’s easy to lose who you are these days, whether by internal or external pressure. Don’t give into it, know who you are and stand firmly in that truth. It won’t be instinctive, shit, it won’t even be easy but it is what I know, and they say you should write what you know.
When shit hits the fan, be who you are, because “no one has ever said, ‘and then it just never worked out’.”
They say that you can’t run away from your problems but let me be one of the many who says, it definitely helps. It’s no secret that my quarter life crisis is in full swing but while I begrudgingly wait for the storm to past it feels like the continued downpour is starting to get to me. The slow trudge of a mediocre waitressing gig, the never ending tennis match of relationships, the distance of friendships and the up in the air status of where exactly I’m going in my life. The benefit of moving home was to figure it all out, the benefit to moving home was to save for this amazing adventure to South Africa, the benefit of moving home was to deal with problems and not run away from them.
I’m sitting on a train on my way from Modesto, California to Sacramento. It’s an hour and a half long ride where, no matter what window you look out, all you can see is miles and miles of farmland in the expansive Central Valley. Herds of cattle and distant hills separate me from the never ending coastline that I grew up on and it still seems odd to me that I’m not land locked by purple mountains and mile high skylines.
I didn’t write New Years Resolutions this year. The reason being is that after the long, strenuous year that was 2015, I now fully understand that you an’t really set stationary goals and expect them to be the same goals you have at the end of the year. Things come up, life changes – the things that were important to you in January aren’t the same things you’re worried about come June. I want to do more, be better, and be open to anything that comes my way, good or bad. I don’t know if those are resolutions but that’s what I’m going with.
God, I Hate My 20's 