Writing Kept Me from Drowning
The story of a quarter-life crisis
If you’re looking for something sensational then I suggest you look elsewhere.
“What are you talking about?” my friend scolded me.
I had just told her how melancholic I felt that she turned 30, and soon I would too.
“You’re only turning 29!”
I very much doubted her. I punched the numbers in the calculator, 29. I doubted that too.
When 2020 rolled out I strongly believed I was turning 30 in March. Not that this was the focal point of my internal struggle, but it played a role.
You see, my life was not terrible. All things considered, I believed myself to be more than blessed. I live comfortably. Apart from minor gastritis, I’m considerably healthy. I have very good friends. I do decent work for decent pay. I’m in a happy relationship. Despite all this, something still felt amiss.
My life was not terrible. But I felt miserable.
The friendships I formed after moving to a different country were more than embraced, I am grateful. But the friends I grew up with were my family outside my family. I was the one who moved away, yet I am the one who feels left out and alone. Even now, almost 10 years later.
My job pays well enough that I can support myself and shoulder my responsibilities with a little extra to spend on leisure. My non-monetary responsibilities, although I do out of love and kindness, were assumed mine. Which makes it heavy to bear at times. Also, I like what I do at work. I am good at it, but I’m not in love with it. I wanted to take a different path but the roads are obscured.
It seems my relationship is the only truly good thing right now. It has its usual ups and downs but has always been healthy. Nevertheless, I constantly fear my other responsibilities will get between us one day. Even if it didn’t, I want to be happy in all aspects of my life. I want something that is just mine.
There wasn’t a big cataclysmic event that made me realize this. For several months it’s been brewing in my brain until the bucket was finally full and tipped over.
I felt like I was in the middle of a vast lake, barely keeping my head above water. Land, although out of sight, is a certainty. If only I knew how to swim.
I would sit on the train on my way home from work feeling defeated. In the middle of watching a sitcom, I would cry because I was feeling trapped by my choices.
There was more ugliness than I care to remember. It was a new low for me.
I needed at least one thing to go my way, and I needed it to happen three months ago. I tried a multitude of things — fixed my resume, submitted job applications, took on more projects at work, attended company-offered classes. I even tried my hand at networking, something very painful for my introvert self to do. Nothing helped until writing found its way back into my life. It didn’t happen instantaneously. It took trying three times before I realized it was what I needed to do all along.
The first time was a writing group I found on MeetUp. I attended at least two sessions then the pandemic hit. I attended a couple of online meetings, but it wasn’t the same. So I stopped.
The second time, I wrote on my own. I realized I didn’t need a group to keep me motivated. I started working on a new book. For several weeks, I consistently wrote at most one chapter a day. Then, my other responsibilities got in the way, so I stopped a second time.
The third and final time, I started baking. It seems unrelated to writing, I know, but it’s important. Baking is the one thing that’s right in the world.
I’ve quoted many times the movie Julie & Julia, “You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure, and when I say ‘nothing’ I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.”
Empowered by this, I started writing. At first, I wanted to write about my baking adventures. Eventually, without me realizing it, I ended up wanting to bake so I can write about it. I could only bake so much on a budget though. It wasn’t enough.
So I wrote about writing — how to write more, how I’m going to make it a habit, the feelings involved. Here I am now, about to publish my fourth article in Medium, with ten more ideas lined up. My heart filled with warmth.
Initially, I thought something was seriously wrong with me. Society has ingrained a picture of what unhappiness looks like, and my life was not it. Simply put, it told me that my feelings were wrong and I’m a horrible person for it.
I couldn’t be totally honest about my feelings because I felt guilty for having felt them.
I found my voice when I started to write. Emotions are a beautiful mess. Through words, I navigated its intricacies better, if not totally.
And my voice said, “Society, how dare you? You are wrong. Do you know exactly what another person is going through? All the thoughts floating around their head? Every single experience they had in the past? All that is happening currently weighing in on them? How all of these interact and affect their thought-process now?”
No? I thought so.
I still carry the same responsibilities, I can’t escape that. I still don’t know what I want to do with my life. All I know is that my current job no longer satisfies my need for personal growth and a sense of accomplishment. I’m still doing all the things I was doing in the past — looking for other jobs, and taking classes. But for all intents and purposes, I still lack direction. I’m still stuck in that vast lake, unable to see land. Only this time, I have a floating device.
Writing calms the wave that is the turmoil in my heart. To make you feel what is not there, to see from within, such is the power of words.
Nothing I’ve done over the past several months compares to the productivity I’ve had since I started writing this month. With my grief having a place of its own, I’ve had time for much anything else. Through writing, I’ve become more introspective.
It’s a hobby right now, but it gives me a sense of purpose. The burden on my shoulder is slightly lifted each time I publish an article. In time, I know it will lead me to self-discovery.
Writing filled a void I didn’t know existed. I am better for it. Soon I will find the right words, and it will make me even better.
