A Different Kind of Coming-of-Age Story — Part II
A quarter-life crisis tends to sneak up on you. To paraphrase Hemingway, it happens slowly and then all at once. In the end you’re left dazed and wondering what happened while your ideologies lay scattered around your feet. You’re suspended in the cosmos without an anchor, drifting towards … you wish you knew. Everything in your life seemed so certain and then suddenly a switch is flipped. You could sense it coming, though — a vague niggling in the back of your mind. But, you didn’t think it would happen right now or ever, really.
It’s the spring of 2018 and I’m miserable. It’s a feeling that’s familiar but this time it’s slightly different. Like a knife that’s been diligently slicing away at my arm getting closer to hitting a nerve, this malaise seemed to be edging me ever closer to the brink of nihilism. I woke up every day with a perennial dread knowing the responsibilities that waited for me. I didn’t hate my job, I despised it. The level of anguish building inside me multiplied exponentially. But what to do about it? I had never quit a job in my life and I wasn’t about to start then.
Or could I?
No, I couldn’t.
How to cope then? How to sedate myself against the daily onslaught of an unbearable life?
And so the slow death march continued. Each day bleeding into the next.
How many weeks had gone by? Or had it been months? I couldn’t remember and I couldn’t be bothered to care.
All the while, I kept wondering … when, when, when? Would today be the day? Would it be so horrible to finally be ‘irresponsible’? I didn’t think those documentaries about spontaneous combustion were actually true but I still thought there’d still be a chance that it would maybe happen to me. My head was constantly filled with too many questions without anything that resembled a clear answer and doubts surrounded by insecurities. But everyone has their tipping-point. My routine of balancing a set of fine china while walking across a 50 foot high tight rope would finally catch up with me sooner than I thought.
It started with staying longer in bed, a little bit more each time — eventually leaving only a few minutes to peel myself from my sheets, get presentable and slug to my destination. Calling in sick also became a crutch. Guilt slowly transformed into apathy.
Then on April 24th, a particularly dreary spring day, I reached the pinnacle. After taking what felt like centuries to inch to the edge of the cliff, I jumped, plunged head-first into icy black waters and let the inevitable happen.
I won’t go into the details about what specifically happened to tip the scales. It doesn’t really matter all that much to be honest. What I will say is that I felt the greatest type of relief that you could imagine — like the world being taken off of Atlas’ shoulders. Dramatic, yes, but true. I hadn’t realized that I’d been holding my breath the entire time. It felt good to finally breathe freely after 10 years. Contrary to my initial hypothesis the world didn’t fall off of its axis. A swarm of locusts didn’t block out the sun and send the Earth into another ice age. Oh and no spontaneous combustion either. It was far from what could be considered an easy choice but one that had to be made.
‘So what happens now?’ I asked myself.
‘Anything you want.’ I answered.
And so with the end of one chapter another began.
Until next time,
Luna
