My Existential Crisis

So I spent the last year thinking, growing, and generally being scared of living. I suppose you could say the scaredness was apparent before the growing part was. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life and that was terrifying to me because I am the kind of person who desperately needs plans.

Out of the blue, I decided to apply to grad school (2 different programs) because I figured I needed to just take the plunge. I think I realize now that I have too many interests and am far too young to consider my perfect career. I have not honed my skills, learned enough about myself or the world, or lived long enough to know myself well enough to choose so carefully. This notion was in the back of my head somewhere, and I decided that my self-worth was suffering because I saw myself as nothing but a waitress. I didn’t want to get married as a waitress. As a result, I applied to two very different programs and then waited to see what happened.

I got into both. After much thought, I chose the one that would take longer but would yield more job opportunities and higher pay. It would force me to move to a city, which I didn’t want to do, but it was far enough away at the time to ignore that part.

But not for long. I still was scared I was doing the wrong thing, scared of moving away, scared of failing in grad school.

These weights were becoming heavier and heavier on my shoulders, but I ignored it by focusing on wedding preparations and playing tennis in a rec league. These worked well until the wedding was over and I suddenly realized I had nothing to do but wait until August when we would be moving. My husband would leave for work/school and I would think myself into a tizzy where I couldn’t see how life could be pleasant in any way and I’d get more and more scared of breathing until finally someone would call me and I would suddenly burst into tears or bite my lip to keep from crying. I felt like I needed to throw myself at my mom’s feet and cry until she would take pity on me and take me back in and protect me forever. My husband is not to blame for this; he was as supportive as possible while being in grad school an hour away and taking the hardest class he will have during the whole degree. I just didn’t want to plague him with my problems.

This happened in some form one day when she called me and I started hysterically crying and she said, “Beth, take a deep breath, put shoes on, get in your car, and get over here. We are getting in the pool.”

So, I went.

We got in the pool and I poured it all out. I have always been a bit of a geek and a thinker so I had taken to philosophizing at home, wondering if I was feeling so alone and useless because everything was connected so everything mattered, or everything was connected so nothing mattered. I guess I watched I <3 Huckabee’s a few too many times. Anyway, so here was my dilemma: If everything is connected, then it’s possible that there is nothing I can do to stop the inevitable hand of fate. I reasoned that there are people who develop lung cancer who aren’t smokers. Does this mean that nothing matters because everyone ends up having the same chances of everything? Or does everything matter  because everything effects everything else ie the butterfly effect? These questions were plaguing me every single day, so I finally shyly, shakily, and bright red-ly asked my mom her opinion. She said, “Beth, it doesn’t matter what matters. It matters what life you live! It matters who you love and who loves you! You deal with the bad stuff when it comes, but aside from that...you live.”

And I felt better. And I don’t care if everything matters or nothing matters. I actually prefer to see the glass as just having something delicious in it. If it doesn’t, I will spit it out and drink something different. It doesn’t always have to be so serious. There are so many hard things in the world- if you think about them every second of every day, you will suffocate. It’s pure survival.