The Young Witch has a Quarter Life Crisis

TW: Talks about struggles with mental illnesses including anxiety and depression.

Please don't panic, Void. I'm not going down the hole quite yet. The thing about being a 22 year old in a Volunteer program were you work over 50 hours a week and is only a year long and is sort of more a gap year thing, but is still actually a job, but like also an experience and you have mental health problems that you take medication for (yes, Mom I took my meds today) is that...well...you begin to take a long look at your life and how you got to this point.

Don't worry void! Really, I'm fine, but this last week has caused a lot of internal reflection. Like, ya know. A lot. A lot a lot. A lot a lot a lot. Lots of lots there I know, but I'm trying emphases for dramatic purposes (I know you appreciate that, Dad).

I'm not sure what started it last week, but it may have been Wednesday when I was sitting in Ms. Duran's class. We started talking about minimum wage. The thing about minimum wage is that I don't make it. I live off a stipend provided to me by my government funded volunteer program, which was determined enough to live in the Bay Area. I live in a two-bedroom apartment with three other people.

Now the thing is, I have a friend who is the same program who makes a smaller stipend than I do (different places require different amounts to live), and she lives in a three bedroom house and has her own room (I wish. Rachel, can I come work with you?).

This whole situation makes me start to remember that even though I love living in California, after I leave my program, I'm moving back to Missouri because I can in no way afford to continue living in California without a guaranteed job among my several other reasons for going back home (that is a whole other blog post entirely and would be slightly off track here though maybe not).

Then one of the staff at my job came to talk to us about ways to improve certain trainings we get and how we deal with teaching the SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) side of our jobs. This got thinking about how much my mental health has been affected by hearing student stories of their struggles with mental health issues similar to mine (which for me can be a huge trigger to my anxiety and depression). Which made me continue to think why am I here?

Now I know why I'm here, but why? Why stay somewhere when things like this happen? Why stay when sometimes you get a lot of bad weeks like this, especially in a volunteer program?

Well, today was one of those days that made me remember. I love my PLC (Peer Learning Community). We're all very close and we share a lot about ourselves and I recently came out to them about some of my more severe dealings with my screwball brain. My friend, Josh, started to ask me about it while we were talking about colleges, due to mine being a huge factor in my mental health deteriorating.

As we talked, I began to realize maybe I was saying too much about certain things and that should stop. I've had some bad experiences with people who have felt that me sharing certain parts about my mental illnesses is me being dramatic or trying to make them feel bad, when all I'm trying to do is explain, "Hey, my brain likes to make me hate myself to extremes, and here are some things that trigger it, fair warning."

When you get those above responses, it tends to make you repress yourself and stop sharing things, which for me, myself and I is interestingly enough something where if I don't say anything, A MASSIVE TRIGGER THAT CAUSES PANIC ATTACKS, DEPRESSIVE EPISODES, AND WORSE.

Did I make my point there? I sure hope so.

So I simply said to Josh, "I know what I'm saying might be a lot, so just tell me to stop if you want me to."

To which he responded, "It's not a lot" and reminded me that it's super important to talk about these things because if you don't, it can be extremely bad for you. Thank God for Josh. That was a huge reminder I needed after last week. It's okay for my to have my quarter life crisis' from time to time, but it's super important for me to be willing to share these fears and anxieties with the people around me or I'm just going go back down the rabbit hole (another blog post for another time.

To end this blog on a happier note: I got to see Evil Dead the Musical this weekend. It was bomb. I was in the splatter zone. I was soaking wet by the end. Best Show Ever.

As you can tell, I was in for a "Groovy" time!