I woke up this morning thinking of the future and considering my options. I asked a friend at work the other night, what motivates her to get out of bed everyday in and day out. She told me that her kids are her reason to get up.
I started tearing up and quietly asked, "but what if you don't have kids? What then? What do you do when you're drowning in the monotony of daily living and you don't even have the air to scream or the energy to cry for help?"
She told me I needed to find something I loved, something I was passionate about. Something that would give me a reason to get up and start my day. I began to think about everything I had once loved and enjoyed doing: ballet, dancing, singing, reading, socializing, making new friends, writing, traveling, swimming...
But where those things once resided in my heart I now only felt exhaustion, emptiness, and dread at the thought of having to do anything besides get up, work, sleep, and survive the day.
Maybe she saw the growing panic in my eyes or maybe she just saw how truly lost I felt inside, but she began to tell me that if Pokémon was all I had right now then to just, "freaking go for that dude. Be the very best."
Of course I started laughing and crying at the same time (something I've been doing on a daily basis when the numbness I've constantly been feeling fades away for a minute) because I know I've been blowing up facebook with my obsession over Pokémon-Go.
But even the excitement of the game is wearing off now and I'm slinking back into that hole in my mind where I can curl into a ball and not be bothered with the problems of the living.
I'm constantly bombarded by things in the media, on Facebook and other websites, that millennials have this sense of entitlement. Or that the economy was screwed before we even had the chance to grow up.
Well, I feel that I've reached the adult phase where I should have my shit together, but I don't even have the energy to get my clean socks together and put them away.
How am I supposed to thrive and find purpose in my life when I'm constantly told that all the things I used to love and enjoy don't offer well paid jobs? Or my university doesn't have that specific program, so pick another one.
I'm stuck in the mud and I can't move forward or backward. Everywhere I look there is hate. Our very own presidential election has turned into a reality tv popularity show starring rapists, criminals and liars. The only person missing is Morey telling Trump how many children he has fathered without realizing it and a cat fight between Hillary and Trump's wife to break out onstage.
It's a joke. It's all a joke, but it isn't funny. No one is laughing. I'm not laughing. I want to just turn it off, but it isn't that easy. This isn't some silly show on tv that has paid actors. This is real life. This is the country I live in. These people who I see in both political parties that are screaming hate and hurting each other through their abhorrent actions isn't funny to me.
It saddens me that we have reached a point in history where the media feeds and gains viewers through its focus on inciting unrest through fear and anger.
In an era where we are more connected than ever through applications, emails, facebook and other related things; instead of uniting together as humans for a better world, we are divided by race, gender, religion, nationalism, capitalism, fear, and hate.
Something is wrong. I can feel it in my bones. I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to fix my own life. But others must see this too. Others that want change; want hope. Because power in the wrong hands leading a people filled with complacency and silence will never change anything.
