Breaking Out of Survival Mode

It’s been nearly two years since I last wrote an article for Medium.

Those two years have consisted of a lot of highs and lows — goodness, so many lows. Going to school full-time while trying to maintain a nearly full-time job is no joke. I have no idea how people are able to handle going to school on top of having to work and take care of children. I do, however, know that I have a lot of respect for the people who do that because I wouldn’t last a month. I’m very thankful for my situation; I know that I’m a very fortunate person. It’s hard to remember that sometimes, though.

There are a lot of excuses that I have, that I’ve completely wrapped myself up in. I got caught up in the darkness of my own mind and haven’t really seen the light since. I haven’t done any writing outside of school assignments since my last Medium post except for a dozen poems that I wrote earlier this year when I was in a particularly bad place. I have been taking at least one creative writing class per semester, and my fiction writing style has thrived because of it. Outside of that though, it’s like my mind would go blank. I had no inspiration and no drive, and I just did whatever the bare minimum was to get through the day.

I’ve been in survival mode for a really long time, but it became especially prevalent after my first year of college, and every year that followed.

The stress from classes and my own expectations for myself weighed on me heavily. Add that to my poor time management and you have a bit of a mess. I was definitely a bit more than a bit of a mess.

If I’m being completely honest, I’m still very much a mess. Though, I’m starting to accept that most people are, in their own ways.

The difference now is that I hit my breaking point.

Technically, I hit that point last semester — right when Covid-19 smashed its way into all of our lives. School went fully online and everyone was scrambling to adjust. I didn’t adjust very well. All of the stress, all of the tears, it all just became too much. I came out of that semester pretty much unscathed, surprisingly, but definitely not untouched. The anxiety that had such a grip on me pushed me too far, to the point that part of me didn’t care anymore.

Related posts:

Foi no dia 20 de agosto de 2011. Um dia antes do meu aniversário de 11 anos e um dia depois do meu avô ter falecido. Foi minha primeira grande perda. Obviamente, toda minha família estava meio sem…

One of the great reason for coding in the Python language is the vast collection of libraries that are made available in the Python ecosystem. As a versatile and general purpose language, Python can…