Existential Crisis

I don’t talk anymore, but I question everything.

When I first left my job at an audit firm, I thought I was moving forward. I was certain that I would now have the opportunity to become what I have always wanted. I thought I would be able to write all day while practising yoga during my free time. In my mind I could build an empire of my writing that would give my family the same, if not more, financial security that Accounting would have afforded them. Call me childish, but I believed in what the movies sold me: that good things happen to people that chase their dreams.

However that has not been the case!

Two years into my second job and nothing is as I had hoped for. If anything, I feel more isolated and alone. I seem to have fallen off the edge of the earth and no one has noticed. I have grown more distant from those I called friends. I no longer leave my house if I am not going to work. I feel anxious whenever I have to make a decision because I am afraid of how it will impact my future. Some have said I am having a quarter-life, but that’s not the case…

Existential crisis perhaps?

I stay up every night thinking of how I can make my life better; how I can move my life into the direction I have always hoped it would go. I’m haunted by the thoughts of not being able to meet my goals in academia. I scroll through Instagram and see my peers getting married and living lives that I could only imagine. I cry whenever I realise that I can never match up to the women my age because my finances are always tied up in paying student loans and inherited debt. How can my life have meaning when I can’t excel in the goals I have set? Does my existence equate to anything if I am unable to leave my mark on this world?

Have you ever questioned why you were born? Have you ever wondered if your life has any true meaning beyond that that we are told by loved ones? I am constantly searching for a sign that my life has meaning. As I slip further and further away from my support system, I no longer feel grounded in the dreams that I once held dear.

I fear that I am not the only one carrying this burden.