aka I watched Inside Out and realised I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life
Hi, me again. It was a lovely lazy Sunday, I was doing my homework and then decided to watch a movie. Since I’d wanted to see Inside Out for a really long time now, I settled on that. Fast forward an hour and a half to me crying my eyes out, fast forward to two am to me having a panick attack about my future.
I have always had a plan for my life with every little detail thought out. For the first 17 and a half years of my life I wanted to become an actress/director. I had a school picked out, future workplace, all the plays and shows I wanted to starr in, the house I was going to live in etc. I knew exactly where I wanted to go and what I needed to do in order to get there. Everything was already in place.
Then came the surprisingly random decision to go on exchange. I still to this day don’t know why I decided to go through with that or what made me want to go in the first place. Somewhere in February 2016 I started looking for universities, I found something that sounded like maybe I wanted to study it. It was called something like English and European Cultures and Human Relations. I soon realised that that was definitely not what I was looking for in life. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, to be honest. All I knew was, that it had to be Denmark. There was no other option.
I came back from my year abroad with absolutely no clue of what I was going to do next. For some reason I announced that I was going to be a teacher. Now I had thought of this before, but in the context of becoming an Estonian or English teacher. Perhaps even Estonian or British Literature as those were the things I was interested in before I left. Now, however, I had set my sights on becoming ... wait for it... a primary school teacher. Let that sink in for a moment. Can you imagine me in front of a class of 20 or so students? Me? A person who hates children? That decision was once again influenced by the fact that I could study it in Denmark. Apart from marketing and tourism, teacher education is one of the few you could study in English. So it was settled, I was to become a primary school teacher.
Fast forward to February 2017, when the application process to Danish universities started and I realised that I have no idea how to do the whole thing. I found new specific admissions rules that I hadn’t seen before, more documents that I had to upload and so on. The deadline is March 15. I’m not sure if I’m going to submit my application, because what if I don’t get accepted? What if I do? What if it’s not really what I want to do? I was going to apply to Estonian universities as well, just in case I need a plan B, but now I’m thinking that maybe that should be my plan A.
So last night, as I was contemplating my entire existence, I had a series of thoughts and questions run through my mind. What if I don’t want to be a teacher? It’s hard work and needs great organisational skills and if you look at my life, let’s be honest, there is no organisation. What if I don’t get accepted to any of my chosen universities? What if I took a year off to work and try to figure out what I really want to do? What if I joined the military and did my 9-11 months of service? (Honestly that idea is starting to sound more and more appealing) What if I just locked myself in my apartment and never left it again? What if I moved to Denmark regardless of whether I am accepted or not? What if I moved to somewhere else?
With less than two months of school left, I am forced to make a decision that will affect the rest of my life. I’m not ready to do that, how can I make that decision if I can’t even decide what I want for lunch? Even by choosing to take a year off to work this out, I am still making a decision. One that I will second guess for the rest of eternity, because of who I am as a person. How do you expect me to choose my future if I sleep for 17+ hours a day and spend the rest dreading that I’m awake? I’m just so incredibly tired of everything, of school, of people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do, of existing. I just want to be in a quiet place by myself where I can just do my own thing. Even if that thing is sleeping for 23 hours, like I did a couple weeks ago.
A while back I considered droping out, I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I felt like I couldn’t do it, but I also knew I didn’t want to do it all over again next year. I remember crying on the phone with my mom for two hours because she refused to let me go through with this. I felt like she didn’t even want to understand my situation and that she was just being mean. We agreed that I would stay, but that I didn’t have to be there any more than I absolutely had to. This meant that I chose not to go to any school events, including my graduation ceremony. I’m actually grateful that she persuaded me away from dropping out, because in less than four months, I’ll (hopefully) have my high school diploma and I’ll be free.
I guess this didn’t really have a deep meaning to it, writing these thoughts down just helps me get them out of my head, which helps me sleep at night.