Welcoming Non-Conformity

I’m overwhelmed in my first week of my first year as a freshman. I feel like I could explode anytime—with a burst of feelings, hopes, and fears scattered everywhere to the point people are afraid to be near me.

After orientation week frenziedness, I come across into a class full of Anglophile. It feels like I finally belong to my old-forgotten niche—to have people who share the same enthusiasm for something that I love. It just feels nice, doesn’t it? To belong to the place when you aren’t acting pretentious at all.

The classes, up until this point, are fun and nice. Everyone is so encouraging and full of life, it warms my heart to see such things. The perpetual numbness has tortured me in a lot of ways. You know the feeling when you’re still awake at 1 in the morning, just lying in bed scrolling old chats or old photos, wondering how you’ve ended up here, and what’s going to happen in the near future. It might seem that I’m depressed. But I’m fully aware that I’m not in that state yet. I spend most of the days feeling very still and flat like I don’t feel anything particular throughout the day.

Is this a part of growing up-slash-adulting?

Or, this is just a phase of adapting—conforming into an alien environment and conversations I've never encountered before?

Aside from plunging into a class full of exceptionally critical and smart people, I learned how this song finally hits me hard. The first week I’m away from home, I didn’t weep at all. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Instead, I feel liberated after all these years living with overprotective yet loving parents. I embrace the solitude that I encounter every day in my small room.

You see, life’s been really kind to me to the extent that I’m questioning its triviality. Sometimes I pause and ponder, do I really deserve all the good things this life has to offer? Or are these things, in the end, will make me suffer?

Let us remind ourselves to be always mindful when shits happen. Often, it gets hard and too much in the chest to carry. To be always forgiving when people you trust deceive you, to be always empathetic and giving space to people.

Here’s to another year of patience and enduring pains.

*PS: While I was writing this post, I found a video that describes best about my feelings right now. Maybe you can check while you are here.