It's been a really long time since I've visited this website. I honestly don't think I can even say I fully recognize the person I was when I wrote my past blog entries. What's funny to me is back then the phrase "it gets better" was something I laughed at because I heard it constantly from people I didn't think understood what I was going through. I realize now, though, that things genuinely do get better. I still obviously have really bad days where I struggle, I've honestly been in a bad place for the past few months, but things are worlds away from the misery I was going through in high school. I'm so grateful to no longer have to be going through the constant anxiety and stress I was on a daily basis back then. I don't know if it was the environment I was constantly forced to be in; a huge crowd every day, full of potentially dangerous strangers and lost of adults I didn't necessarily deem trustworthy that were supposed to be my "protectors" were in charge of my care every day or if my anxiety has genuinely improved, but either way I feel a million times different now than I did then. 

One major difference, and definitely not something I would have anticipated happening back then, is I stopped attending college. I plan on going back soon, either for a minimester this December or just the spring semester of 2021, but I haven't gone to a class since my second semester in the spring semester of 2019. Part of me is genuinely terrified to go back because I feel like school is just part of what made me so miserable. Outside of the constant triggers, the pressure to do your very best all the time, and that never being good enough for seemingly anyone, is just not a routine I want to get back into. I went to school for 13 years of my life and I feel like I got nothing out of it. I don't feel like I even learned anything transformative during my time in college, either. I had maybe on interesting class that challenge my way of thinking, but it was a history class that didn't even go towards my degree. My college professors were just rehashing the same information I had been taught in high school, in the same way my high school teachers had recycled information from middle school. Additionally, I am putting myself thousands of dollars in debt just to either learn things I already know or things I simply have no interest in learning. I thought college was supposed to be when I was finally allowed to take classes that actually pertained to subjects I was interested in? I thought this was supposed to be the time in my life when I learned new forms of math I was always teased about in high school calculus class, but instead I was still taking quizzes on the Quadratic Formula because "we have to go over the basics." (Look, I don't want to sound like an arrogant asshole here, but I am not paying thousands of dollars for "the basics" I came here to learn math that would further my interest in the subject and I feel like I'm being scammed. I can find more intriguing content on mathematics on YouTube than I could in my college classrooms and that feels like and insult to the debt I'm putting myself in.) So, I'm not necessarily excited to go back to school, to say the least. 

If I could have a conversation with my past self from two years ago and I told them I was currently a college drop out who's unemployed (due to a pandemic, but still unemployed, lol) they'd probably start a fist fight with me and win. I feel like I desperately need to get myself back together. Although I'm happier, I'm technically a total fucking loser. All I do is smoke weed and play Animal Crossing. I need a fucking life. I need to actually do things with myself. Hiding myself from the world to cope with my anxiety isn't actually coping with my anxiety, it's just preventing me from actually having to deal with it at all. I can't develop any healthy coping mechanisms if I'm not even giving myself the chance to get out there and experience the world, including all potential triggers. I also need a plan for my life. I'm almost 21 years old and I'm still not sure what I'm supposed to do. Because I don't necessarily HAVE to go to college to be happy or successful, but I never really put any thought into any other avenue. To be fair, I was sure I was going to kill myself after my high school graduation until about a week after it happened and I realized: "Oh shit I'm still here I have to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do now or get the hell out of here" and unfortunately, I chose the former option. I tried college and I'm not sure if I'm even ready to admit that it didn't work out yet. Nothing about college went the way I anticipated. I'm not sure what to do or where to go from here. I didn't plan for being alive this long, period, but I was sure that if I was I would at least go to college and get a decent career. 

How am I 20 year old adult stuck in the same position I was when I was 16? Confused as shit, no plan, with no idea what the fuck I'm supposed to be doing with my life.