What to do, what to say

When the future is black, your mind goes blank

Florencia Alegria
Aug 25, 2017 · 3 min read

There must have been a moment in which I felt confident about my choices and my future, I felt happy and excited, I could see beyond my present. I remember a time in which I was certain of what I wanted to do with my life and how. And before I new it, my mind went blank, and when I tried to envision my future, everything was dark.

Arts College, major in Acting Techniques and English Literature. Going abroad to study more, for a year or two. Later on; acting, writing, maybe teaching a few workshops at schools. It was a plan. It was a path. And then it was no more. No more plans, no more paths, no more lighthouse showing me where to go and what to do.

When the year started, several things from my past and my present clawed their way out and started to haunt me. I could not think. I felt sunken in a dark hole, and I lost myself. I started to do bad at school and lost my motivation. I failed my classes and didn’t even care, whenever someone asked me about college I would say I was happy and doing well. To everyone else, I was my old self, living her dream, and studying what she had wanted all her life. I kept the act. I tried to sound excited about the classes that would normally excite me, I would say I was at college when I was actually anywhere else simply escaping from reality. Every time I stayed at home, I would say that my class got cancelled, or that it was later in the afternoon, or that I had that day off.

My body filled with anxiety and fear when I thought about college. Even as I write this, my fingers tremble because I don’t know what to do and I can’t help but keep acting like everything is fine. For the first time, my future feels uncertain, really uncertain, no plan b. When I stop and think about my life and my future, my body stiffens and I cannot think straight. The fear of becoming nothing and throwing everything away fills my soul and prevents my body from moving.

I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want to do and what I want to become. I know I have to quit college for now, otherwise I’ll fail my classes anyway and end up being kicked out. I cannot focus, I can’t go to class, I can’t think without overthinking.

I lost all connection with who I am and I simply act how everyone expects me to act. I don’t know me, I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what to do. I’m lost.

I feel like I need to leave, get out of my usual space and try to get away from expectations and the different versions of me that live in other people’s minds. I need the chance to find out what ‘being myself’ means anymore. I’ve thought about signing up for the Work and Travel programs, but everything scares me. It scares me that in the process of trying to find myself, I find nothing.

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Florencia Alegria

Written by

I have yet to be born

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