While I was in college, after I chose a career path for myself, I gave myself a set of goals and a timetable by which to accomplish those goals. Within three years after my college graduation, I wanted to have a writing career off the ground, a photography business on the side, and maybe a boyfriend. That was the timeline in which I knew most of my peers would be finishing up graduate school and finding cool jobs. I even finished my first novel just a year after graduation.
Then something I hadn't carved out time for in my schedule of life events occurred, and my original timetable was chewed up and spit back out. I got hit fast and hard with a debilitating amount of anxiety like I had never experienced before. With my anxiety disorder diagnosis, my life was derailed. Every goal I had for myself took a backseat to my mental health, and new mental health goals were scrawled on the remaining pieces scrap paper, to like to get my anxiety under control so that I wouldn't cry every day when my mom had to leave me to go to work.
During that time, I found myself unable to work on a new book. I couldn't concentrate, and when I could, none of the words that came felt like the right words, so I would delete and start again. I couldn't even remember to contact literary agents about representation for my first book. It seemed like the only thing I was capable of was trying to make it through each day and looking for something, anything that might help me get my brain back to a healthy place again. My career life and my daydreams of an actual love life halted as working through OCD became a primary goal.
Suddenly, I realized that life had continued to move on while I felt like I was frozen in place. My peers finished graduate school and started interesting and fulfilling careers while I hadn't wracked up any publishing credits or started a successful photography business. There I was, suddenly closer to 30 than to 20, with nothing objectively successful accomplished, terrified I would never be able to write another word after my first book, all because of an anxiety disorder that got out of control.
I felt like I was behind in life, like I had fallen drastically behind my peers. I was no longer in the same place in life as all my friends. I had no fancy career in the works like they did. I had no serious relationship like most of them did. I had no graduate degree like some of them did. I wondered if I failed at life. I wondered if I had made the wrong choices and wasted valuable time that I could have been accomplishing great things, like everyone else I had graduated college with. I didn't think I could ever catch up and accomplish the things I wanted at the rate I had been going for the past couple of years.
Here's the thing that I realized after this mini-crisis about keeping up with my peers: Priorities and goals change as circumstances change. My circumstances were suddenly vastly different than the circumstances of my peers. That meant my priorities and my goals changed to reflect that. I suddenly found myself on a different timetable than the people I had graduated college with. Sure, I wasn't accomplishing the same things as my peers, but I was accomplishing things on the detour I had taken, like talking myself down from a panic attack, being able to be alone again. Starting this blog also became a new priority of mine instead of only writing fiction because dealing with the mental health stigma was a new priority of mine, and helping people feel like they weren't alone on their mental health journey was a new goal.
I realized that I wasn't behind in life or failing at life. I had just reorganized my priorities. My mental health was number one on the list, writing was number two, getting published was number three, and my love life came in somewhere near the bottom. Each priority seemed like a stepping stone of goals to the next priority. Plus, I could accomplish more things if I had a healthy brain to better deal with the stress of trying to accomplish something.
I realized that I didn't need to compare myself to my peers. I don't need my accomplishments to match anyone else's accomplishments. I have different circumstances, priorities, and goals than Suzie down the street, so why would I look at her with her job and her life and think I needed to have the same accomplishments that she has? That would be silly. It's okay if your best friend wants to go to medical school while you want to get a BA in Photography and travel the world for a year. You wouldn't compare your life to theirs, and then feel bad because they achieved a medical honor that came with a plaque while you won a photography competition that came with a ribbon, right?
My life is my own to stroll and stumble through at whatever pace I choose. Sure, I had to take a detour that I didn't like, but I still managed to accomplish different things while I was on that mental health detour. I even realized some new goals, and I accomplished them in a way that I never expected. I'm not behind just because strangers can't objectively see the most recent thing I've accomplished. I'm also not failing at life simply because I found myself on a different timetable than I imagined for myself. There is no rule written in stone that tells me what I should have accomplished by the time I'm 30.
I'll end with this: You are under no obligation to keep up with your peers. If you feel like your mental health condition is keeping you from accomplishing things, just look for your small victories. Did you manage to get out of bed and eat something during a rough patch with depression? Did you manage to go out with friends even though you were worried your anxiety would ruin an outing? Then you've accomplished something, and that small something is one tiny stepping stone to accomplishing other things. You aren't failing at life if a mental health condition derailed your plans for your life for a little while. There is no rule that says you have to accomplish certain things by a certain age. Just move forward one stepping stone at a time, and feel proud of each step.
No comments:
Post a Comment