
Pre-College Anxieties
My Feelings Of Starting College
I’m an eighteen year old from a country whose name you wouldn’t know.
In a lot of ways, I’m in a similar situation to everyone around me, but I obviously interpret it differently. Simultaneously with more and less hope for the future and presence. When I’m around people I like I feel like the sky’s the limit, and I know it to be true, but when I’m alone or in a bad spot with someone I like, I fall down, I break. Always aware of every possibility, but barely ever strong enough to act upon any one of them. Knowing my fantasies but never reaching them.
I feel like I’m doing a lot better than most of my peers, or at least the people I personally know, specifically by talking to them. But I’m just not happy and very unsatisfied with my life. I’m working more on myself now than I ever have and yet my fears don’t stop, old anxieties quit and new ones instantly take their place. I’m in a seemingly never-ending struggle.
Stuck in limbo, spending my time vacationing, running away from all my problems and obligations. Cowering from what I want to do, because that is what frightens me more than anything. In some ways, I have been doing this my entire life, but this recent spell started July, after finishing high school. After ending a difficult time in my life, I looked on to prepare for college. Going to college is a monumental improvement to my life, this I know, but I can’t stop thinking that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons. I haven’t decided anything about my life, the real one I expect I would have after I’m done with lending myself to bureaucratic organizations.
That thought process alone might just be my biggest problem. Just admitting that this is my life. I know that, because of course I do, but I also know it’s only temporary. It will pass and I will transition into something else, assuming I still live, taking countless experiences and elements so far accumulated. But I yearn for something else, I always have. I’ve led quite a wondrous life, far better than countless people, but I barely enjoy it. I was handed a good deal in life (so far) but I really took my time to realize it. The bad feelings are still there. The troubles still haunt.
My hardships in life have been few, this I know, but I remain feeling powerless in a constant battle against what I want to do and what I actually do. I am my worst enemy. My view of what I want my life to be is unmistakably hazy, but I know what skills and habits I want to learn now. But I rarely follow through with my own wishes for not nearly long enough. There’s always something that prevents me a long enough time to stop my accumulating habits. It takes about three months for a habit to form, a timespan that looks terrifying in contrast to my weekly benders.
My life is better than ever, and yet I had two panic attacks in one week. I know it’s the best it’s been but it’s still not enough. I know the future is shaped by my deeds in the present, but I keep making the wrong choices. That is the ultimate human folly, not the act of choosing, but dealing with the ramifications of our choices. For forever now, I find it to be torture.
All my misery comes from three places, my relationships, my academic life and my procrastination. My real problem is unsatisfaction with how I spend my time. I am the cause and the problem to all my woes. But will I ever manage to fix them?
Off-loading my damaged self onto another bureaucratic organization in the hopes of gaining discipline, knowledge and a life improvement just sounds like a recipe for disaster. The likeliest possibility is that I’ll finish my undergraduate studies in time, without failing a year and be back to the same problem three years from now; facing the prospect of getting a masters for the same reasons.
My hope remains that I will drastically change in these three years at college, just as much as I have changed during high school. Back then I went to a school in another city than my own, but I commuted there and back every school day. Now I’m 7000 kilometers away from there, in an environment just as alien and familiar. For better or worse, I am always me. That I can change in countless ways, but so many of my habits are so entranced that I worry ‘How effective I can be in changing them.
What will become of me is always up to me. If I will manage to fulfil my dreams or not, I do not know. The only real care I have is will I enjoy the transition? Will I be happy in the process of reaching or changing those dreams? Only time will tell if I am on my own side.
