I had a psychology class at my university yesterday. It was presentation day for a small group of fellow students, who gathered the class into a circle. One of them began throwing around a beach ball after giving the instructions: "Whichever question your right thumb lands on, you have to answer." The ball is thrown around a few times. I guessed I would probably be one of the last students to get it--I don't tend to be the liveliest person in the room, and people were naturally going to throw the ball to people they liked and knew. Surprisingly, I slot in somewhere in the middle.
"What has been the happiest day in your life?"
It caught me off-guard. "Why couldn't I have gotten any of the questions I heard before, like 'What would you ask …show more content…
I'm getting a degree for a career that I don't want, going to a job just above minimum wage that I hate, and am doing absolutely nothing else to better myself. The last "friend" that cares to talk to me at least once every semester is going to a university an hour away. I'm living in the suburbs, have a great car because of my parents, and great opportunity because of my grades, and I still feel like something is wrong. Somewhere along the line the happiness stopped.
Today, the most exciting part of my life was waiting in line to buy some spaghetti sauce that looked a little off at a cheap supermarket nearby. Not the most eventful day, meaning that, for me, there was a lot of time to process the past and worry and regret about my life for hours on end. I've never thought of myself as having "anxiety" or "depression", though I do consider myself a "professional worrier". And in my mindless thinking, I always seem to go back to when I was 10--a decade ago now. I was the best on my soccer team, the most dedicated band member at my school, and had an albeit small but close group of friends that I could confide in for anything. That time seems like a dream to me now--like some sort of mystical paradise that is probably over-romanticized by my mind today. But for little 10 year old me, I was …show more content…
I could show a straight, stoic face and never get angry even if a customer was screaming at me. At my former job, my manger even complimented me for having a cool-head. I probably wouldn't even be writing this if that had continued.
Recently I've been noticing a change. I've been feeling that it is getting ever-so-slightly harder to push down my emotions. I get teary-eyed over the pictures of some stranger's dead dog. I've been getting angry over the smallest things such as losing the rubber parts of my earbuds. These are two emotions that I thought I could control--that I was better than them.
I used to tell myself that I was happy this way. I was happy when I was secluded and alone, playing video games by myself every night and just putting my head down during classes as long as I got the A. I don't want to keep doing this anymore, I don't want to keep playing pretend--that I am happy being some loner in the corner of a room. When I think about all of the time that I have wasted drowning in my misery I feel sick to my stomach. How did I let myself get to this place? Why do I keep stopping myself from being
"What has been the happiest day in your life?"
It caught me off-guard. "Why couldn't I have gotten any of the questions I heard before, like 'What would you ask …show more content…
I'm getting a degree for a career that I don't want, going to a job just above minimum wage that I hate, and am doing absolutely nothing else to better myself. The last "friend" that cares to talk to me at least once every semester is going to a university an hour away. I'm living in the suburbs, have a great car because of my parents, and great opportunity because of my grades, and I still feel like something is wrong. Somewhere along the line the happiness stopped.
Today, the most exciting part of my life was waiting in line to buy some spaghetti sauce that looked a little off at a cheap supermarket nearby. Not the most eventful day, meaning that, for me, there was a lot of time to process the past and worry and regret about my life for hours on end. I've never thought of myself as having "anxiety" or "depression", though I do consider myself a "professional worrier". And in my mindless thinking, I always seem to go back to when I was 10--a decade ago now. I was the best on my soccer team, the most dedicated band member at my school, and had an albeit small but close group of friends that I could confide in for anything. That time seems like a dream to me now--like some sort of mystical paradise that is probably over-romanticized by my mind today. But for little 10 year old me, I was …show more content…
I could show a straight, stoic face and never get angry even if a customer was screaming at me. At my former job, my manger even complimented me for having a cool-head. I probably wouldn't even be writing this if that had continued.
Recently I've been noticing a change. I've been feeling that it is getting ever-so-slightly harder to push down my emotions. I get teary-eyed over the pictures of some stranger's dead dog. I've been getting angry over the smallest things such as losing the rubber parts of my earbuds. These are two emotions that I thought I could control--that I was better than them.
I used to tell myself that I was happy this way. I was happy when I was secluded and alone, playing video games by myself every night and just putting my head down during classes as long as I got the A. I don't want to keep doing this anymore, I don't want to keep playing pretend--that I am happy being some loner in the corner of a room. When I think about all of the time that I have wasted drowning in my misery I feel sick to my stomach. How did I let myself get to this place? Why do I keep stopping myself from being