Final Thoughts (Part 3):  (this is a mess, but I eventually reach a point)

(Again, Final Thoughts is a late night series of streams of consciousness on graduation, high school, the future and other things. That’s why they’re always a bit scattered and all over the place, but hey, we’re all good with that.)

May 31, 23:52

Hello, world; today, we are going to discuss that very real sense of mortality and uncertainty that comes with high school ending.

If you have never felt unsure of yourself, now will be the time where you will feel the most unsure of yourself!

And that’s okay, it’s totally natural. 

Here’s what is disconcerting about graduation. I wasn’t sure why I was feeling like my stomach is floating in zero gravity at all times, but identifying it helped me deal with it.

1. I think the most disconcerting part of graduating is not having people hound you to get things done. I have 1000000 things on my To-Do list, yet, instead, I took the longest, sweatiest, and worst nap ever, and, now, I am writing this. All you have is a deadline that floats around in your unconscious and you have a bunch of responsibilities that no one really cares if you get done or not, so you have to take care of it on your own.
2. You have a constant dull ache to tell all of these people (that you are likely to never see ever again) your last words. How they’ve impacted you, what you admire about them, etc.. That’s a lot of pressure.
3. You know your place in high school and you can’t help but imagine your place in the near future, but the idea of your dreams not coming true makes everything a lot more real and unpleasant to think about.
4. You know that no one will excuse your actions simply because you’re young anymore.
5. This is so dramatic, but this is like a mini-death. This is your whole world, you’ll just be a memory. There are kids at the school that you don’t know and vice versa, and they have 4 years left in a place that you feel like you’ve outgrown. 
6. You might actually finally start feeling comfortable with where you’re at in high school, and now it’s ending very suddenly. 

With only 2 days of school left, 100-degree heat fast approaching, forms to get signed, yearbook messages to pull in— the end of the year is starting to sink in fast.

So your imminent death in this weird microcosm of adolescence is pretty scary. On top of that, you cannot help but think about after high school! When suddenly your future plans don’t involve the next grade level above you, but rather having to build a whole new life once again.

Let me tell ya, I have had at least 3 existential crises in the past week, because every time I think about not being in my hometown anymore, I feel excited. And then when i think about the caliber of students at my school next year, I get even more excited. 

And then I get scared.

And then I feel insecure.

And then I think about my blog and my YouTube!

And then I get really excited!

And then I get scared.

And then I feel insecure.

And then I think about how I have all summer to beef up my being-a-cool-human-being resumé!

And then I get really excited!

And then I get scared.

And then I feel insecure.

So, long story short— everything I am looking forward to makes me excited, scared, and insecure all at the same time. I believe the combination of excited and scared is anticipation- but “insecurity” being thrown in the mix instantly turns it into anxiety. SO, that’s where the issue lies.

I have always been a very, almost terrifyingly, introspective person. 20 minutes ago, I read all my Notes from college application season and just exams in general and, honestly, if you looked up “Izzy Angus” in the dictionary you would find:

(n.) self-affirmation mantra goddess; very stressed; needs a nice bowl of blackberries, some candles, and a hug.

I literally handled every single problem in my life with a couple of words on a screen, deep breaths, and a head-first plunge into whatever scared me.

I just need to cope with my new anxieties in the same way that I coped with all the other anxieties in my life. The only difference between these new scary things and past high-school-related scary things is the fact that these are self-imposed. I’ll call things without a deadline “soft stresses” and things with a deadline “hard stresses.”

I don’t have a deadline or an obligation to do anything about the things I asked about above, so it’s easy to just want to give up and say, “What’s the point, life is fine the way it is, I should just lie in bed and watch Naruto.” Your soft stresses really don’t affect anyone other than yourself and if they’re left, untreated they’ll just hang over you like a little grey storm cloud. Hard stresses, on the other hand, are pretty much mandatory to handle and treat, or else you end up with a D+ and a disappointed mother.

Anyway, how does one cope, you may ask? 

By literally coming up with anything positive and saying it to yourself over and over again.

There was one day where I literally wrote “Everything will be okay” on every single sheet of paper I got my hands on that day, and it helped.

*There’s no particular reason as to why I offered that piece of advice, but hey, everything plus the kitchen sink is mentioned here, so I might as well have thrown that in.

So this is a mess, but long story short— growing up will suddenly throw a lot of soft stresses at you in your life. You’ll feel uncertain, everything feels like it’s ending and beginning at the same time, and that incongruity is what messes with your head.

Once you’re out, your journey really becomes your journey because you’re the only person who can care enough about your journey to do something about it. Graduation makes everything incredibly real, it launches you into this notion that you really need to take the reins and be independent, to start caring about yourself, as well as pushing yourself.

You have to learn how to take risks, love yourself, and keep yourself in check. Three skills that take a lifetime to develop, yet you suddenly have to learn in 3 months before officially starting your new life.

So, yeah, graduating is a lot.

But everything will be okay.

Love, 

Izzy

0:28 June 1st, 2016