Author: liz

Misc.

Why I Don’t Write Poetry Anymore.

liz

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Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

If I had a frequently asked questions section of my blog, I bet you one of the questions I would have to answer is the one I’ve been getting from people for the last couple of years:

Liz, why don’t you write poems anymore?

As I’m slowly trying to get myself back in writing creatively again, I remember the times that I sat for hours writing poetry in my notebook. There was a point in time that I wrote a new poem every other day, possibly writing and posting one on Facebook every week. I used to attend poetry workshops as a teenager and for a while, I began to see my poems becoming better, cleaner, and wittier. For a while, I was “Liz, the poet” more than “Liz, the writer” and I was fine with that. Poetry is what ultimately made me start writing and to start taking writing seriously.

Then, I stopped.

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I stopped writing poetry at the end of 2013 mainly because I found myself being a much happier person. My poetry was at its greatest in 2012; the time when I was battling with depression and issues within myself. Yet, my poetry in that era was some of the cleanest, wittiest, and most put together pieces I ever wrote. I find myself reading back at those poems from time-to-time and I have to ask myself, where did all of this come from? I mean, surely my inspiration came from my depression and my issues, but the passion and the hurt behind it; how did I convey that through poetry?

But, I didn’t stop for only that reason. I stopped because I was a wuss. I had a friend at the time that would criticize my writing and my ability to write good poetry every single time I would share one. It was always something negative like “this was absolute trash” or “do better next time”. As a depressed 18-year-old girl, that was discouraging and slowly but surely I just stopped sharing altogether.

I didn’t realize this was my issue until I took a poetry class during my last year of undergrad. I had to be conferenced by my professor and I had to show her my portfolio of poems I’ve written in the last semester. She wasn’t the nicest professor at my college, but she knew what she was talking about, and I appreciated her critique because of that. She told me that I had a gift for contemporary poetry. She told me that I have such an urban lyric style to my poems that she never really saw in her students. She also said that I could do better. My poems were creative and they told stories, but I wasn’t confident enough to let my words speak for themselves. She then asked me if I had any background in writing poetry and I told her, but I also told her that I’ve gotten driven away from poetry by my peers. I told them that they made me feel like my poetry was amateur and not meant to be taken seriously; like my voice shouldn’t be taken seriously. I mean, my professor ultimately told me to tell them to go fuck themselves, but it was already too late: by that time, I lost my passion and my drive for poetry. I wasn’t in such a bad place anymore, and I overthink my poems because I get so nervous that they aren’t good enough.

Two years after that talk, I find myself wishing that I kept that side of my creative writing closer to me. I wish I was able to just ignore those around me and continued to write poetry to help heal me. Sitting down and writing one is easier said than done, and every time I do so, I end up scrapping it. I don’t know if there will be a time when I am able to just write a poem, but I really do miss it.

It really was a love-hate relationship when it came to poetry. Writing poetry made me have to get in touch with my feelings and how I felt about certain things. There would be times I would write a really dark piece, and even after I was done with it, the ambiance would still be around me. But, some of the greatest poems come from a place of hurt, and I wrote some of my best during this dark time in my life.

Maybe poetry was just a part of my past self, maybe I just let people’s comments win.

At the end of the day, I will always be a writer, no matter how many people want to tell me otherwise. My writing always speaks for itself, whether in stanzas or not.

 

-Liz. (:

Misc.

Weekly Update! (12/11 – 12/17)

liz

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Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

It’s literally been ages since I wrote a weekly update on TNTH, but ya girl has to fill up some space nevertheless for TNTHmas, so I figured I’d recap my week.

This week has been a really rough one. One of the toughest ones I had in a long time.

If you read Day One of TNTHmas, you guys will know that I’ve been dealing with an immense amount of anxiety and depression that has been building up in me for the last year, and this week I’ve been living in its puddle of shame and guiltiness for everything that’s been happening. Honestly, there’s just a lot of stuff going on that is overwhelming, and it made me shut down a couple of times before. But, I know once I hand in my final papers in a couple of days, I should feel more relaxed and straight-minded.

Speaking of school, my last day of class was on Tuesday and I can’t believe that I made it through another semester. I seriously have one more before I graduate and I am so not ready for the shit-ride next semester is going to put me through. It’s just going to feel good to know that this lifestyle I am living as a grad student will be over soon and I could say that I did that shit.

Lastly, I am wrapping up my papers so that in the break I have from now until the end of January, I can do some revaluation on myself and begin 2018 on a better note. These next couple of weeks I just want to take walks every single day and embrace everything around me. I want to set goals regarding my thesis so that by the end of January, my thesis is intact and just needs to be tweaked and polished up. I want to have my head on so tightly that nothing can bring me down. I am ready to press restart.

Anyway, I hope everyone is enjoying TNTHmas! There’s definitely a lot more to come; we still have an entire week left! See you tomorrow for day five!

 

-Liz. (:

Misc.

SAS: Reconnecting with the Holiday Spirit. (12/16/17)

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

We are literally twelve days away from possibly one of the biggest holidays in American culture (and I say that because Christmas has turned into the holiday of consumerism, and that’s what American culture practically is). In a more traditional perspective, it’s the time of year when families come together and spend time with one another, no matter how long it’s been since you’ve last seen them. The holiday season is the time of year I get to see my family the most; we always do this thing where we open gifts together at my aunt’s house and ever since I was a child, I looked forward to doing this with my family.

The last year, though, my family has had its ups and downs, and personally, it’s hard to get that “holiday spirit” because I don’t have that “connection” like I once did. I’ve learned a lot about my family in the last year, and although I love my family, there’s always someone or something dividing us: distance, people, the list can go on.

All and all, it’s sometimes hard to get into the holiday spirit when you know that the happiest time of year isn’t the happiest for you or your family. It seems like the holiday season can sometimes even bring out the worst in people, and it just sucks when it does the ladder.

I know I am not the only alone out there who feels this way, and this post is for those who feel alone.

Some people can’t go home for the holidays because their family doesn’t accept their lifestyle or their identities. Some people don’t have family left to go home to. Some people are in situations where they have to split up their holiday season because their families just function that way. There are a million reasons why the holiday season can be a rough one, and also one of the reasons why suicide is so high during these seasons.

This is the season where you have to be thankful for what you have, and throw away the idea of the things you don’t.

If you don’t have a family to go home to, I bet you there is a friend who will open their home to you during the holiday season. If you simply don’t have that family connectivity and feel more distant than loved, celebrate the holiday season with your friends. Celebrate Friendsmas or something. NO matter what the situation is, you have people who love and support you and will welcome you because it’s the holiday season and no one wants to see a person alone on the holidays. 

As for me, I am taking care of my mental health this holiday season. It’s so easy to think about the bad things that happened around this time of year, but I know I’m coming out stronger if I live these next few weeks thankful for those who love me, and those who I love back. In some strange way, I am letting the brokenness of this situation make me stronger as a person, and to enter 2018 on a positive note. I am allowing this to be an example for me so that when I get older and have a family of my own that no one will feel alone or distinct.

This holiday season, I matter to someone. Someone is thankful to have me in their lives. And the same thing goes for you.

 

-Liz. (:

Misc.

Lizlovinnn’s Holiday Traditions!

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

When I was younger, I used to say that my favorite holiday was Christmas because of the presents, I mean what child doesn’t? Now that I’m older and “an adult” (let’s face it, I’m nowhere being one), I still say that Christmas is my favorite holiday, but definitely for different reasons. Christmas is my favorite holiday because I get to do all of the traditional stuff that either my family or I do! I’ve definitely created some of my own personal holiday traditions over the years, so here are some of the things I do every year during the holiday season:

  • If I can, I put up all the Christmas house decorations and the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving or the weekend after. This year, I’ve managed to decorate my apartment with Christmas stuff, now I’m just waiting to have some time to put the actual tree up. (Edit: she’s up!)
  •  For as long as I could remember, my extended family would come together for Christmas and exchange gifts either before or after Christmas (one year, we exchanged Christmas gifts January 31st… yeah). When I was younger, though, we used to do it before Christmas and whenever my grandparents came into town, they would drop off me and my sister’s gifts at my house, and then take us to my aunt’s house to open the other gifts. I used to hate it when my grandmother would tell my mom that we weren’t allowed to open them before Christmas, and my sister and I knew that my grandparents spoiled us rotten. We got amazing gifts as children. We still do get amazing gifts, but we get to open them the day we see them nowadays.
  • My family and I open Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve. There’s no special reason why; we were literally impatient as kids and now we’re impatient grown adults. Personally, I never liked opening gifts on Christmas morning. I feel like presents should be open at nighttime after dinner; who wants to be groggy and tired opening gifts the morning after?
  • Speaking of Christmas Eve, I’ve spent every Christmas Eve with Obie for the last six years. At first, it was just coincidental that we would hang out on Christmas Eve, but after the 3rd year of doing so, I made it my mission to always see him that day: 1.) to keep the tradition going and 2.) to give him his Christmas present. Let’s hope we do it again this year!
  • When my sister and I were kids, my parents made Santa’s arrival really dramatic. One year, the whole fire-escape window was wide open and things were knocked down; another year a big ass garbage bag of gifts were left on our front porch as if Santa was the fucking UPS Delivery man, it was fun and honestly, I didn’t stop believing in Santa until… I was legit 10 years old.
  •  I guess I picked this up from my mother, but every Christmas I send out a couple of Christmas cards to some friends. I send cards to those people who I don’t really get to see anymore or anyone who lives far away now, but I always do it for the holiday spirit. I feel like people don’t send out cards anymore unless you’re that suburban family who lives in a wealthy neighborhood and buys every family member a different Hallmark card because they just got it like that. I felt like I just shook a whole community of people. I feel like some of my friends only get cards from me, and I really like to bring that aspect back into people’s lives again.

 

And that’s all of them! What are your Holiday Traditions?

 

-Liz. (:

Voiceless Rant: The Series

A Voiceless Rant: December 2017 Edition.

liz

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Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH! Even more so, welcome to the first official day of “Twelve Days of TNTHmas!”

It’s only right if I dedicate this first day to possibly one of my favorite things I’ve introduced to the blog:

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Guys, let me start off this rant by saying just how much I missed writing for the blog.

When I first started TNTH (almost a year ago), I started the blog trying to portray this idea that I was this put together person who had all the answers to life and if you needed something answered, I was able to solicit my advice to you guys just because I want to help others with any issues they were having at the time. As the months past, I lost the passion I had for the blog, and that’s when many of the hiatus periods started. But as I’ve started to write for me and what expressed me best, I began to find my reasons in why I started this blog in the first place. Now here I am, extremely happy to be starting this new little series on TNTH.

I wanted to use this voiceless rant to express my honesty about something that I feel like many people can relate to because it’s still considered such a stigma in society. Here at TNTH, we advocate self-awareness, self-worth, self-love, self-acceptance, and we take mental health seriously. We express to our readers that if they feel like they are at a place in their life where they feel like they personally want to give up on life, they shouldn’t be afraid to talk and reach out to those around them or to a professional. I’ve realized in the last couple of weeks that saying it is a lot easier than actually doing it. Even though I personally go against the stigma mental health has, it’s hard to fight against it when many of us still believe in it.

I come from a family of mental illness; it’s apparent on both sides of my family. It has carried down generation after generation and it has been unspoken and unseen on both sides of the family. I grew up watching one side of my family disown a family member for being mentally ill, and even though it’s more than just that, that’s how my sister and I grew up to see it as. Currently, a family member of mine is going through a process of delusionality, something that was passed down within the family. The only person who was brave enough to seek help with their mental health was my sister, and she still is persistent and active with getting extra help. Other than that, even bringing up mental health with my family is always frowned upon; you’re labeled “crazy” or looked upon as “weak.” Granted, I come from a Puerto Rican and Italian background: basically two of the ethnicities that don’t respond to mental health talk so well.

For the last year, I’ve been dealing with some bad anxiety and depression due to grad school and my life in general. I slowly felt like I was having issues with everything in my life, I lost most of my friends from undergrad, and I was dealing with the nonstop work grad school provides their students with. Being the first in your family to graduate college and almost graduate grad school puts a lot of pressure on me. My family has this belief that with my master’s degree, I’m going to be making that good money that will eventually get the family out of poverty on hard weeks. To a perfectionist like me, that translates to “you need to get a great paying job when you graduate or else two years of grad school was really for nothing!” and I know that’s not what my family means, but it registers like that, and I’m constantly panicking about what life is gonna be like this time next year and where I’m going to be. I barely have the time to think about the present, what makes you think I’m thinking about jobs?

Every time I do express my concerns about grad school, I pretty much get the same reply from everyone: you’ll get through it, just keep pushing and do what you gotta do. Please stop telling me to keep pushing forward and get the work done. I already know all of that, but that doesn’t stop the anxiety, the pressure, and the late nights of writing 5 pages of work at a time for the following class. That doesn’t stop the mini panic attacks I get if I’m stranded at 10 o’clock at night trying to get home from class in the dark in a different borough. That doesn’t stop the constant struggle of trying to prove myself in a universe where I don’t exist because I’m not a literature major. Telling me to get the work done and over it is pretty much like telling me to build a bridge and get over it. 

As much as I wrote about how I felt during this year on TNTH, I still didn’t express these concerns to my family. In my family, I feel like I always had to take on this role of being the “strong one”. I was meant to keep the family together when shit got tough and that I was never bothered or upset about the things that were happening. I’ve always been described as the “calm and happy one” and it kills me whenever my mother would unintentionally joke around and tell me I’m not the bubbly girl I once was, that I’m “boring.” I know she means no harm, but even things like that flare up the depression I’ve been rocking ever since this year started.

This year alone, I’ve probably gained a lot of weight. I cut almost 8 inches of my hair, completely damaged the shit out of it. I never knew how my day was gonna go because I was so used to feeling upset or sad during the day. My anxiety got worse, I don’t feel confident or pretty anymore, my relationships with my friends, family, and even with Obie began to suffer, and I’ve had my fair share of nights when all I wanted to do was be invisible to the world. Most importantly, I lost my passion for writing.

Still to this day, nobody (besides Megan) really knows these things about me.

Because that’s the thing about mental health: nobody can see it unless you acknowledge its presence. It’s not noticeable unless you’re shouting at the top of your lungs that you’re depressed and don’t feel like living the life you have anymore. If you’re not expressing your mental health verbally, nobody is going to see the signs. As far as I know, nobody came up to me this year and asked me how I was doing. Nobody saw that little by little my hair was getting shorter and shorter. Nobody saw how I don’t wear makeup anymore and I don’t do anything pretty to my hair. Nobody saw how I just completely stopped painting my nails. Nobody saw me stay up at 3 in the morning to finish assignments that were tedious and frustrating. Nobody saw that I stopped doing the things that made me happy. Nobody saw how distant I was becoming. Nobody came up to me and asked me if I was okay.

But it’s also my fault that I never expressed the severity of my depression. I thought it was just a phase of being too stressed out over grad school and all of that, but even when the work stopped I felt those same things. When I tried to attempt to express my thoughts and feelings, they were never taken seriously because it’s always the running joke that grad school is stressful as fuck because of the workload. I always thought that my thoughts on grad school, no matter how much of it is actually my life, were a burden to those around me; that I was going to become that girl who spoke nothing but my struggles in grad school and I felt really embarrassed to share my concerns.

Even after all of this, I’m still telling those around me that I’m fine.

I don’t know when I’ll be ready to break this stigma, but I’m personally at the point in my life where it has to break sooner or later or else my life is going to go down a rabbit hole that it has not been in for years. I just wish people could see what’s wrong and give me the support without even having to ask me. I don’t always want to talk about all these issues; half of the time they make me cry and relive the year over in 10 minutes. I wish I wasn’t so afraid to seek the help that I need. I’m not on the verge of killing myself or anything, but I know I’m also not living my best life.

So, thank you guys for allowing me to express myself on here. I don’t know if I’ll feel fine after writing and posting this. I don’t know when I will feel fine. There’s no set and goal time for recovery, but I know I will someday look back at this and be like damn girl, why didn’t you speak out sooner?

It’s okay not to feel okay, and it’s okay to express your not-okayness out loud.

-Liz. (:

 

Misc.

Twelve Days of TNTHmas! 🎅

liz

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

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I am happy to announce that for the next twelve days leading up to Christmas, I will be publishing a new post EVERY DAY until then! I wanted to do something special on the blog for the holidays (kind of like how YouTubers do “Vlogmas” every day), so I thought of creating my own little daily thing! I mean, it’s probably been done a million times already but what the hell!

The first official post will be TOMORROW, December 14th at 12 noon! I’ll see you guys until then!

-Liz. (:

Misc.

Happy Thanksgiving! (& some other stuff to discuss.)

liz

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Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH.

Happy Thanksgiving, TNTH readers! Whether or not you celebrate the holiday, I hope everyone has a “first official day of the holiday season” and eat up all the food you want! I personally don’t look forward to Thanksgiving for the food; I really enjoy it for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade because it’s always been a tradition of mine to sit in the kitchen with my mother and watch the parade as she gets ready to start cooking the food. A typical Thanksgiving day for me is just that: watching the parade, the dog show, and doing homework for the rest of the day.

Also, Thanksgiving is definitely a day of reflection for me. It reminds me of the year as a whole and who I’m grateful for being here for me in the year. This year, I have a lot to be grateful for; this year my family and I personally went through a lot; so I’m grateful that even though we’ve all been through a lot, we still believe that the only people we’ll have in life are our family. I’m also incredibly grateful for Obie for continuously being there for me whenever I needed him the most. Thank you for being around when I’m happy, sad, stressed, anxious; pretty much thank you for being around 24/7. Seriously though, thank you for having such a kind heart, and thank you for allowing me to see that.

Of course, I am also grateful for the people who continuously show up and support me on TNTH, whether they know me personally or if you’re someone from around the world! I personally want to thank you all for supporting and reading TNTH for the last 11 months. it’s been an adventure writing for the blog and having the tiny community we have on here. Again, thank you for reading and for being a part of a journey that I had no intentions of going on when I started 2017!

Which brings me to my next topic:

TNTH isn’t officially back from hiatus. I just wanted to stop by and wish everyone a great day, and to let you all know that I have plans to make TNTH even bigger and better than it was before. But before I do that, I have to wrap up this semester! So, like I said before, TNTH will be back the week of December 18th!

If you’ve been here from the beginning, you would know that I launched TNTH on my 23rd birthday this year and in January 2018, it would be a year since I started the blog; I want to celebrate this milestone! As I mentioned on the TNTH Facebook Page, I’ve been following a content creator I’ve known since high-school, (you can find her on her Youtube channel and her social media accounts under “MermaidQueenJude” if you’re interested in seeing what she does) and she is currently daily blogging every single day for the month of November, and I really enjoyed following her along with it. I decided that for the entire month of January, I will be daily blogging on TNTH! I will finally have the time to write content for you guys, and the best time to celebrate my birthday month and TNTH’s anniversary month will be a “Blogaversary Month Thingymabob”. The name is pending. 

If you’d like me to talk about something while doing this 31-day writing spree, please let me know either here, or under this post on the Facebook page!

Again, thank you guys for everything you’ve allowed me to express and talk about on this blog. This blog has opened a new door for my writing, and I hope I get to do something like this for the rest of my life.

I’ll see you guys in December! I got papers to finish! (and parades to watch and food to eat!)

 

-Liz. (:

Misc.

It’s the most stressful time of the year…

liz

Hey guys – welcome back to TNTH.

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So, it’s November, and I sold myself short in October. I was able to put out a TNTH post every Tuesday and Saturday in the month of October after telling you guys that the blog would be going on hiatus.

While I wish I was able to do the same in November, I know that I can’t.

November is the time of the month where I begin the “work all day and night” portion of my semester. Final papers are due in December, and I have to begin getting ready for them.

I will try my best to keep you guys posted whenever I can.

See you guys soon!

-Liz (:

Misc.

How a Porn-Related Retweet Helped Me Accept My Body Image.

liz
*disclaimer: this post discusses various NSFW topics*

Hey guys, welcome back to TNTH!

Let’s start this post with a bang: I’ve always been overweight. I have always been the fat girl in the group of skinny friends, also known as the fat girl who never had boys actually look at her as “attractive” or “sexy” or “beautiful”. Even though I was sucked into this mindset where “fat = ugly”, I still liked myself for who I was. I still do, but when it came to other people liking me romantically, I became insecure about my body and image.

When I finally had a man look at me and call me sexy, beautiful, funny, smart, etc – I was in shock, I can’t lie. I mean, what were the odds that the boy I liked would actually look at me the same way? I thought it was too good to be true, and when the years passed by and the same boy (now man) was still around for all of me, that’s when I realized that yeah, men are going to be attracted to girls, no matter what shape or size. But even then, I kept questioning my looks and my image next to my partner. I kept asking myself do I look good standing by his side? Is it weird for a skinny man to be with a fat girl? Do couples like us really exist without it being a “fat girl fetish” thing?

Every now and then, I feel insecure about my body and my image, even when there’s someone in my life who likes me for the way I am. What do you expect? We live in a world where #RelationshipGoals is a glorified trending tag on social media showing those how “real relationships” should be like. A fit couple working out in the gym? #RelationshipGoals. A couple with a newborn baby and the girlfriend is super snatched after giving birth? #RelationshipGoals. Interracial couples that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye? #RelationshipGoals. Everything is such a “relationship goal” that people begin to believe that what they offer in a relationship and how they physically look isn’t worthy or good enough. Anyone in the situation where their body is considered ugly is always left to wonder damn, where’s the relationship goal where a fat girl feels great in her body and the man loves her for your body and her confidence? Isn’t that a relationship goal?

To society, no.

For most of the time being with my partner, I’ve always brushed those thoughts away. I didn’t mind that what I have with my partner wasn’t a social media “relationship goal.” I was still very happy with what we have, what we share, and we always have fun being together. After trying to be unapologetic about my looks and image, I began realizing that most of my “me” problems stemmed from the fact that I still didn’t accept my body for what it is. Weight is weight, sure, but I still found it so hard to accept the skin that covers this meat on my bones. I guess I was sucked into this universe where I was so traumatized as a young teenager and being called fat and ugly and not good enough, that I always had that inner image of myself; I was never good enough for this fucked-up society.

Then, something funny happened.

As I was on Twitter earlier, someone tried to make a joke about this Twitter account promoting its pornography subscription. I mean, I’m a 23-year-old woman, when something like that pops up on my timeline, it sticks out as a sore thumb and I’m curious as fuck as to why it’s on my timeline. So this subscription porn site thing has real-life adult and consenting couples who decide to share their sex lives through this service. I mean, the person who retweeted this made some dumb joke about not wanting to see “normal people have sex” (???), but I wasn’t even paying attention to the response; I was more intrigued about the idea of this subscription site. There’s a whole industry of pornography where the “sexiest” men and women get all hot and worked up for pleasure; whatever, we all know the idea of porn, and the idea of a service being made about real-life couples wanting to show their sex lives on camera isn’t even what baffled me. It was the little advertising video attached to this damn tweet. These were regular ass people. These were different people with different interests, different attractions, different ideas of what sex should be, and most importantly, there were couples who were physically polar opposites or “non-traditional” couples. There were gay couples, lesbian couples, gothic couples, hippie couples, white couples, black couples, interracial couples, fat couples, and everything in between.

Now, you’re probably wondering like Liz, what the hell does this have to do with your self-confidence? And for the most part, it doesn’t. Sex is such a natural thing that that aspect of this tweet wasn’t even that much of a big deal. For the most part, this service exposes pornography and its unrealistic expectations of a sex life; that you have to be slamming hot and blonde and the man has to be athletic and fit and strong to have an amazing sex life, blah blah blah. Seeing some of these fat girls with their skinny partners explaining how amazing their partner makes them feel inside and outside the bedroom made me realize a very important thing: confidence doesn’t have a size.

These women who I immediately identified with allowed me to finally begin this process of accepting myself in my own skin. What’s truly beautiful is knowing that in real life, there are people who look just like me and just like you and even if they are polar opposites, something truly deep down connects them both. What’s beautiful is that this misconception of fat girls being “too ugly for relationships” is dying out in the real world. I mean, it’s always going to live on through the eyes of those who think life is just a fantasy land of one type of person, but at least we are making some progress and showing the world that confidence is not a size, but it’s a one size fits all ordeal.

 

-Liz. (:

Voiceless Rant: The Series

A Voiceless Rant: November 2017 Edition.

liz

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH and most importantly, welcome back to another installment of A Voiceless Rant.

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I am going to be 24-years-old in 2018. I am going to be graduating with my Masters in 2018. I will potentially get my first job in 2018. My life is going to make a complete 360 in the next year, and I’m not ready.

I’m definitely a creature of habit; when I’m comfortable, I tend to stay put. This year alone, I’ve been realizing that the things that made me feel like myself are slowly becoming distant. For the entire year, I thought was falling down the rabbit hole of depression to the point that I’ve been holding onto parts of myself that I don’t identify with, just for the sake of having one.

For the majority of the year, I felt like I wasn’t even a real person. I felt like I was just living each and every day without any purpose, without any motivation, without any drive. I’ve tried so many things to help me get back to the person I was a year ago and when I even got close to being that person again, it didn’t feel right, and I began to lose even more than I intended. Something’s gotta give, right?

As I’m now slowly transitioning into a healthier mindset, I realize this is potentially the start of a life-changing journey.

Do I sound non-sensical? When do I not? I can’t see the future and I don’t know if this will lead to anything, but it’s something you just feel. You look back at what life was like in the last couple of months and see from an outside perspective how you behaved and handled situations. Everything that I felt stems from the fact that my life is going through a transition from ‘student’ to ‘real-world adult’. I am preparing myself for the better, and undoubtedly the worst.

If you feel these things happening in your life, don’t worry. Things happen because they need to happen. Give it time and thought, yeah, but things naturally happen because they have to. You feeling this way is one thing, acknowledging it is a completely different thing.

1.) You feel the need to physically change something.

A year and a half ago, I had ombre hair. In March 2016, I decided to dye my hair all black. My black hair felt like the color I was going to keep for the rest of my life. It felt like my signature color because so many great things came with that hair. I felt like myself. When 2017 came, I didn’t feel like that person anymore. I felt like I was now wearing a wig of the old person I once was, the girl who was getting ready to graduate college with her bachelor’s, having a big group of friends in my acting class, and having a passion for cinema. For the majority of the year, I constantly bleached my hair and cut it really short just to feel like a different person. Two weeks later, I found myself buying black hair dye just so I “felt like myself again”. A month later, I would go through the same cycle. I am one of those women who changes their hair color and style whenever I feel like I need a change in life. I guess this last year alone I was afraid to let go of my comfort zone: long, black hair. I am now currently rocking chin-length ombre hair, and I feel like I am making it my own.

Also, I find myself wanting to lose weight, not because I’m lacking self-esteem or confidence, but I am starting to see and feel the potential health hazards that come with being overweight. I’m only going to be 24, but I am starting to feel like I’m 44, and I’m tired of feeling tired. In the recent weeks, I’ve considered getting weight loss surgery once I graduate in order for me to begin this new lifestyle change that I can’t do on my own. I mean, this is as life-changing as it’s going to get, but I want to get this done not just to “lose weight and look good”, but I want to feel good. I want to be able to move around like I’m in my 20’s. I want to actually live to see my 60’s. These little (or major) decisions to make to commit to physically change is as life-changing as it is. You change the way you live, and I feel myself wanting to accept that change coming my way.

2.) The things you tolerated before now annoy you, A LOT.

I was never a person who spoke up because I was never confrontational. For the most part, it worked, I just dropped things, but in a way it allowed people to treat me a certain way, and I would have no reaction to it. I always felt that I was able to fix things without actually sharing my side of things. I’ve been seeing that in the last year, I’ve definitely been more irritated and annoyed when people do that to me, and I never understood why all of a sudden, I was acting like that.  I was growing tired of the fact that I felt people weren’t giving me the respect I know I deserve. Because of that, I lost a lot of people in my life in the last year. It’s still hard for me to stand up for what I feel and believe in because I hate arguing, but it’s needed to let others know that yeah, I’m cool, but don’t disrespect me in any shape or form and my voice matters just as much as yours. 

3.) Your emotions are on a constant roller coaster.

Yeah, most of us will call it our hormones and PMS, but when it happens randomly at any time of the month, any time of the day over anything in your life, you begin to wonder what the hell is wrong with you. Ultimately, you may think that you’re just unhappy with life, but maybe you’re just realizing how to properly express how you feel. Just because you become more in touch with your emotions, doesn’t mean that feeling them and expressing them is a bad thing. Yes, there is a time and place for every emotion, but personally, I find myself feeling a lot more because, for years, I suppressed them. I always thought feeling too much was problematic so I would bottle them up until I forgot about them. But like everyone says: “bottling up your emotions doesn’t solve the issue.” This year I’ve cried more than the last three years combined, and I’m not ashamed of it.

4.) You are more aware of yourself; you are more in-tune with your soul.

This may sound weird, but I personally believe people who are going through this transition in their lives know themselves best. People who have their shit together got an idea of what they want, what they like, and how they react to situations, but I feel like, in this significant part of your life, you learn more about yourself. You go through different shit just to see how you react to it and handle it. You’re able to see yourself in an outside perspective. Because you are more aware of yourself, you are able to make decisions more efficiently; you begin to see what really in life makes you happy. The last couple of months have shown me that what makes me happy is the things I already had, or already was doing in my life: writing for TNTH, Obie, family, listening to some really good music, and honestly watching some Game Grumps. The simple things that I absentmindedly did or enjoyed before were now absolute cheer-me-ups once I acknowledged their uses for me. For example, a 2-hour long Game Grumps compilation of their funniest moments can instantly calm me down from an anxiety attack. It’s knowing how you respond to things in life and knowing what to do when put into a situation.

5.) You feel lost, or you don’t feel like you’re getting enough in life.

I think this is what made me realize that I might be possibly going through a transition in my life. I am constantly thinking about change. I know personally that whenever I think about change it’s because I feel lost or stuck in life. I feel like I’m not moving up to better myself or I feel like I’m not experiencing life to its full potential. I constantly think about finally graduating so that I can make TNTH a serious part-time job and going out into the world to find a full-time one. I am constantly thinking about traveling outside of the city to experience new scenery and hobbies. I am constantly thinking about where I want to be by the time I’m 30. Yeah, it’s great to live in the present and get things done now in order to get to where I want to be, but sometimes you need the break in order to move forward. Last weekend, I took an entire weekend off from school work and did the things I wanted to do (which was just a YouTube binge), but it felt good not to worry about school work for once in a really long time. Just because you have to go through hardships in order to get where you wanna be, it doesn’t mean you throw your happiness out the window.

Like I said: most of us are going to go through these major transitions where we feel like we’re changing for the worst. I felt like I was walking backward for most of the year because of it. If you allow yourself to think that way, you’re going to indulge in it some more. Misery loves company. Acknowledge how you’re feeling, and take into consideration why you feel like that. Think of it in a positive perspective. Think of it as getting to know yourself again. People change, you change, and it’s okay to feel like you are. Change is definitely a risk, but don’t be afraid to take it. Don’t sell yourself short.

 

-Liz. (: