i’ve been up trying to find the right words to describe this past year, with school and three jobs. honestly, i have been sitting here for the last hour in front of my laptop trying to find the perfect way to sum it all up. i have so far mustered up: lonely, sad, annoying, a lot of bitch work, long days, short nights, gradually drifting away from those i love, finding myself less in tune with who i am/was, etc. But i think what i have come to realize is that, none of it matters. When i started out my sophomore year in college, my goal was to work harder than anyone else i know. to pull all nighters, work all week and weekend and my motto was “everything gets done by any means necessary.” and I mean, that’s great. I was working hard, getting money, getting decent grades, but… there was an element missing, and it was the element of happiness which is the sole scale on which i measure if i am truly accomplished or not. I am the person who goes to bed every night asking myself, and myself only..“Are you happy?” and I stopped asking myself that. I started going through the motions, becoming who people wanted me to be, morphing into someone i didn’t know, essentially.. boring. and what an unhappy person i was. I did not do things anymore for myself and selflessness is fine but when you lose yourself in what you are doing but do not find a intrinsic feeling at the end of all that hard work, what is truly the point of it all? so i found myself forcing emotions, watching movies, shows and listening to music to evoke the passion i had for my own feelings and it was nowhere to be found. lost, gone.

until one day, about a month ago, a whole slew of emotions hit me out of nowhere, a week before finals of course.. how perfect. it was insane. i found myself at a high not because i was happy.. by this point, the whole “working harder than anyone i know” mantra died off and i felt something missing. there wasn’t a smile anymore, there wasn’t a pep in my step and i had no desire to be anywhere longer than i needed to be and i hated it. so i cried. a lot. for about a week, not to anyone really, just to myself.. as a reminder that i still feel. i eventually started crying to my parents and then to my best friends until i remembered that feeling again. the one that comes after a good cry session, when you throat is tight and your face is salty from the tears, but the weight of the world has transcended beyond your shoulders… i truly don’t expect anyone to read this, if you have gotten this far without scrolling past, thanks. but i was just remembering what it was like to feel again, and through that, remembered myself. understanding that i am a passionate person in the pursuit of pure unadulterated happiness. and that’s all i seek. now, what does happiness mean for me? it means a bunch of different things, and it changes with the seasons but as long as i am continuing to find my happy, to tend to my heart and my soul then i am completely satisfied.

the point of all of this is to highlight the tremendous amount of growth i have experienced within the last year, those three jobs and many a cry sessions or not crying when i should have can sure take a toll on a person.

btw i have had about 3 hours of sleep in the past 40+ hours so if this doesn’t make much sense and is vague and ambiguous like the majority of my posts, sorry!