I’m not sure what I’m doing with my life and I’m not really ok with that.
I have now been back in America for 12 days. And if I was sad to leave Florence, Florence must’ve been sad to see me leave too. So she kept me back for a few hours longer. Meaning I missed my flight. I’m not really sure who thought it would be a good idea to have my first flight home be at 6:30 in the morning, but after going to sleep at midnight and setting MULTIPLE alarms for 4:00am, I woke up at 5:30am. I arrived at the airport at 6:30 (when my plane was supposed to be leaving), having at least 30 panic attacks in the taxi on the way there. So I missed my flight, and for some reason, there was no one at the Delta check-in desk. I went to the ticket desk to ask for help and they told me to call Delta to ask for help. So, I called and almost had the entire situation figured out on my own with minimal fees aaaannnnnnddddddddd………..my phone ran out of data. The call drops just when everything is almost managed, so I went to the customer service desk asking for help. From there I tried using a pay phone which didn’t seem to be working, went back to the customer service desk where the lady told me there was absolutely nothing she could do to help. (The workers at the Florence airport are the most unhelpful people in the world and did nothing to help my anxious mind.) After more time and about 75 more panic attacks, I was eventually able to get in touch with my dad who bought me a completely new plane ticket at 2am his time. I eventually made it home only 7 hours after I was originally supposed to, but damn that was the most stressful morning of my life.
And if having that as the start to my morning wasn’t bad enough, when checking my email at the JFK airport, I found that I was no longer being offered the unpaid internship that I had been previously guaranteed. So yeah, the worst day of my life got worse.
A few days after arriving home, my family and I drove up to Kent for my college graduation. Jet-lagged and unsure of my future, I was actually pretty excited to graduate. After the ceremony was when all my fears came alive. For a while, they’ve just lived in the back of my head. I realized that I didn’t know a life outside the education system. I had been in school for as long as I could remember and I’m still not sure how to exist without the guaranteed structure. To make matters more daunting, a ton of my peers seem to have their lives figured out with jobs, weddings, or children (sometimes all of the above). Someone even told me that my next step should be falling in love and getting married, which really adds to the whole big “what am I doing with my life” question.
For years I’ve been trying to get to where I am now. But now that I’m here, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. I made it out of college a semester early and I have a comfy life at home with no job lined up. People keep asking me what my next step is. I always jokingly reply, “cry a lot.” (Not really a joke, but that’s beside the point.)
the traveling bean 