Overflowing. Overdoing. Overthinking.

Albert Camus said "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what Happiness consists. You will never live if you continue to look for meaning of life". 

No offense to Albert Camus but It is so surprising that the person who wrote books on Plagues and human dysfunction was so self-aware that he could look right at the purpose that people spend ages looking for and summarize it in so few words.

Long back, I was having a conversation with my best friend about love and the people you have to leave behind regrettably when one of your relationships doesn't work. I'd hate to admit this but I am all too familiar with this feeling. Growing up felt so exciting when I was younger. And now, each year feels like it's bringing the noose of reality closer to my throat. And as much as I'm afraid of what I'll encounter once it arrives, it's practically inevitable. Time stops for nobody.

Throughout my teen years and even later, I saw, read, and poured over hundreds of posts, articles, and how-tos on dating your friend, not dating your friend, being together with someone you've known since high school, a stranger. I could keep going on and on, but you get the point, right? The internet, and quite possibly everyone around me gave me versions of their stories and spun tales about how their lives changed because of a single person. In these stories,  you always find the perfect match, everything seems blissful and then, you get your pretty little happy ending, all nicely tied with a ribbon.

And right around my 25th birthday, I got the gift of a lifetime! Well, everyone did! And I understand I'm being slightly overdramatic about this but the global pandemic deserves some drama, doesn't it? The world started shutting down on itself while I was trying to process becoming 25 years old.

Anyway, it is quite safe to assume that my personal self-esteem was at an all-time low. I'd had a really hard breakup, had next to no friends except my sweet, sweet roommate, and nothing to look forward to because 2 trips back home were canceled for the foreseeable future. I was entering into what most millennials called their 'Quater life crisis' while the world was literally in crisis!! The stark resemblance between the two was not ironic!

In my own way, I was trying to figure out what to do when everything was practically halting around me. I tried to make the most of the time that was given to me. And although there is a lot that people don't see when they look at me, I did not make the best of it every day. There were days I felt defeated by everything. There were days I could only get up and drink some water to make sure I wasn't dehydrated. My roommate was my saving grace on most days. I could count on her to check up on me when I was down, Become a sympathetic ear when I needed someone to vent to. And then there were days I wanted to fit long adventures into. And boy did I try!! I took long walks and bus rides into the countryside, I started dancing to relieve stress and made myself put it out for the internet to rip apart. I worked out and worked within to keep myself from crumbling. 

Over the last 2 years, so many things left me feeling drained, spent, and completely devoid of everything all at once. In particular, people closest to me seem to have the most complicated relationship with me. I spent countless hours sitting on the bed all by myself, looking back over every single time my relationships have befuddled me. There have been enough times when I have wondered why my mother has always been my harshest critic. Because I have enough evidence to show for that. What I sometimes lack is a real feeling to tell me that all of this humiliation isn't all there is to her. Or am I doomed to have the worst relationship with my own mother? Just when I think that I can finally rest easy and worry less about when my professional life is going, my personal one starts resembling a spider's sticky web with strings being pulled all over the place and no clue where they come from or where they go. If only teenage me were looking, she would be massively disappointed. She was very organized. She had an entire list of things She was supposed to accomplish in her twenties.

If I were to trickle down and condense everything I found out about last year, it is that when the entire world is falling like loose cement and things around you are not looking all too well, you only need to remind yourself of one single thing. There will be a sun tomorrow, bright and sunny. If you can remember to wake up just to see the sunrise over the horizon and find some semblance of calm there, keep going. You will not see it now but you just need to hold on. A couple years from now, you will be glad you chose to look at the things that kept you steady on your two feet rather than crumble after a defeat. Every time something goes wrong, you will know that you have it in you to get back to normalcy, simply because you were able to go through a freaking pandemic while stuck in a tandem loop, inside your head (this rings true for me anyway). There is no way life can throw worse at you. All you gotta do is keep going on. even when it seems like the thoughts have suddenly become animated and are grabbing at your with their long talons, wanting to stop your progress.

When the vultures circle, what will you use in your arsenal to shoo them?