Blog #22: A Lot of Things

This week has been kind of rough. Though I can’t say why in particular, as nothing bad has really happened, I’ve not been feeling like myself. My mind has been foggy, I’ve been feeling unwarranted anxiety, and my lack of a sense of direction, both in general and in regard to this semester in India specifically, has prompted a feeling of dread. Really, my mental health this week has just pretty much been sh*t.

This existential dread hit me like a brick wall when, in our yoga class today, my instructor said that interest does not equate passion. As people, we can be interested in a number of different things, but this doesn’t necessarily mean we should spend our life chasing them. Instead, it is the pursuit of our passion that fulfills and enlivens us.

The thing is, I don’t really know what my passion is.

Over the years, I have toiled over and struggled with this. I’m interested in what feels like thousands of different things, many of which I have mistaken for passion at some point in time. These interests led me on, then dumped me right when I thought things were about to get serious.

Sometimes I worry this is due to a lack of self-evaluation.

I often get swept up in the excitement of something new and challenging, but forget to take the necessary time to reflect on whether or not it is something worthwhile to me.

Moreover, I know that a large part of this is due to my obsession with reputation.

I think a lot of people who know me can attest to the fact that I do a lot of things simply for the sake of being able to say I did them. Although it’s about my social media ‘presence,’ my resumé, and future grad school applications, it’s also about something much more than this. It’s about an image of myself I have conjured up in my mind that I feel is the suitable way in which I must present myself to others. It’s about my desire to create and maintain a reputation as ‘the girl who can do it all.’

I know this is an unrealistic goal to keep up. I am only human.

Nevertheless, I have always gone out of my way to go the extra mile. Although in high school I cared about being Student Body President and Class President and National Honor Society President and Spanish Club President and Valedictorian and whatever else (trust me, the list goes on), I mostly just cared because of the reputation it helped me earn and how good it would look on college applications. Rarely, if ever, did I take the time to determine whether or not I— as Kailyn… as a person— actually cared about these things. Whether or not I even had an interest in them.

Present-day Kailyn is indubitably different from high school Kailyn, but this still remains.

Although I have certainly grown in my abilities of self-reflection and self-examination, I still find it incredibly difficult to assess options through the lens of what is best for me, not what is best for my reputation/resumé/whatever other bullsh*t. This freaking sucks.

Which leads me back to this kind of sh*tty week.

Although I have loved and am so incredibly grateful for my time so far in India, I have also been asking myself why I’m here. So many people have asked me this, but not once have I asked myself. Why am I here?

I honestly don’t know.

The first time someone asked, I had to scramble and make something up on the spot. The second time someone asked, I still didn’t know how to answer. The third, fourth, fifth, etc. never really got any easier. I’m here because a non-traditional semester abroad will make my grad school applications stand out? I’m here because nobody else from my university has studied here, so I can claim to be the first? I’m here so I can tell people I came here?

Why the f*ck don’t I have a good answer for myself as to why I’m here?

This thought has been drifting around my noggin for the past few days, as well as a lot of doubts about my present level of self-awareness. I’m embarrassed to admit that I traveled all the way here without any sort of personal reason why, no personal intentions. Along with this, I’ve been doubting the path I’ve laid out for my increasingly immediate future.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE.

Yet, instead of taking the necessary time to try and figure this out, I have continued to bulldoze ahead with what I have believed to be the “right” path. I have joined too many organizations. I have labored over my GPA with devastating effects to my mental health. I have overcommitted and overworked and overstretched myself in the name of ‘passion,’ when I have known full well the entire time that I don’t really have a clue what my passion is. Part of me thought that spending 4+ months in India would help me figure this out. Part of me is only more confused by my being here.

The truth is, I desperately need to stop giving a sh*t about what other people think of me.

On a small scale, I’m actually kind of good about this. I like to think I express myself in a genuine way without fear of what others think about me. On a larger scale, I am not so good at this. I feel that overall, I need a reputation and a resumé and a grad school application that is impeccable. This large-scale inability to shake others’ perceptions of me has led to a warped method of decision making.

I make my decisions for others, and rarely for myself.

I pursue opportunities because they look good, not because I’m passionate about them.

I knowingly let myself mistake my admirable interests for my personal passions.

***

Tonight, I had dinner with three of the loveliest ladies I’ve ever met. They are genuine and intelligent and bold. We talked for hours about a number of things, and after hearing about some of their passions, I realized why I have been so off this week. I have spent so much time in the past seven days focusing on things that I ‘should’ do, rather than focusing on things that will feed my soul. Pouring so much energy into the thought cycle of what I ‘ought’ to do has left me feeling drained. I have thought myself into a mentally unhealthy state of being.

I do have a good reason for myself as to why I came to India— I came to challenge myself, to grow, and to let go of the expectations of people around me by starting new. I have always known this, I merely lost sight of it after being caught in my mental trap of should, ought, and must.

I still don’t know what my true passion is. I don’t know if I will find it while I’m here in India, or whether I will find it ten years from now. I also know that if I continue down this path of doing what is right by societal standards, instead of by my own personal standards, I may never find it. This would devastate me more than anything else.

So, rather than remember the sh*tty parts of this week, from here on out, I will choose to remember the parts about it that made me feel alive. I will remember dancing in the dessert shop and accidentally hitting Sarah in the face (I’m sorry I made you bleed). I will remember buying a ukulele and using it to sing with dozens of children whom I volunteer with, and being filled with joy as they smiled and sang along to ‘Rivers and Roads’ with me. I will remember the hour I spent video calling my ridiculous family at 2:30am, and laughing so hard I considered it an ab workout. All of these things have filled me with love and life, and although they aren’t necessarily passions that will lead to some sort of successful career, they are things that I’m passionate about nonetheless.

This is a nice cheesy conclusion, but I also know that I can’t just flip a switch and be cured of my shortcomings. Instead, in this coming week, I will make a conscious effort to be more in tune with myself; to listen to myself when I say I ‘should’ do something, and ask myself why. I will make a conscious effort to make decisions based on my own personal wellbeing, and not on what I think society or others may expect of me. In the end, that’s all I can do.

**I hope everyone else had a great week, but if you didn't, please please please reach out to me. We can talk or walk or sing or dance or whatever you want to do, because I know what it is to be in a dark place, and I don't want any of you to go through it alone. Please.**

1. I still feel bad for hitting Sarah in the face. 2. I picked a happy picture for this post because I believe that even when things seem bad, there is still so much good to be found.