Firstly, I want to apologise for being absent from my blog for the past month. I feel like I start all of my posts like this, and I doubt very much that you’ve been sat awaiting a blog post written by me, but I feel like I should apologise all the same. And now that I have finished my degree (yes, finished my degree!), I have free time, and I think I should write a blog post marking this significant point in my life.
So, I have completed my three years at university! I have a lot of mixed feelings about this, and these feelings are probably tainting my view on my achievements. I know I should be really proud of myself for completing my degree when there have been so many times I have wanted to give up because of how generally crap and poorly I have felt. But now I am facing the thought that I have being trying to suppress for a while and that is – ‘what the hell am I going to do now?’ I know this is a thought of pretty much every soon-to-be graduate and there are many organized people that are enrolled in a masters, or starting a graduate scheme or at least know what they want to do now that university has finished. (And I’m happy for you all – honestly!)
There are also some of us who have no idea where to go next (including me). And trying to tell my control freak alter ego that I am young, and it is okay to not have a solid plan right now, is really hard. I moving back home, away from some of my favourite people that I have met whilst at university, and also 3 hours away from my partner in everything, my bestest friend. As much as I know fo’ sho’ we’re gonna do this long distance thing – the uncertainty of it all kills me. I love plans, lists, organization and familiarity. Leaving education – the only thing I have ever known since I was 3 – is hella scary. Leaving the place I have created so many memories over the last 3 years is scary. Leaving the place where I met, and spent two years with my love is really scary.
I do not deal well with change. I do not deal well with uncertainty. And all of that thrown together is making my emotions go crazy. My mental state has improved significantly over the last few months and I hate the feeling that this situation is making me take back steps. I am stunned by this overwhelming feeling of ‘this was not how the relief/accomplishment/pride of completing my degree was supposed to feel’. The last 3 months in therapy I have been learning to control my worry. One of these techniques was to try and postpone my worries. Making a note of my worries, and setting a ‘worry period’ to think about these worries (often realising how trivial half of them were and how solvable the other half were). This was not one of my favourite techniques in CBT anyway, but all of the worries I am having now I always decided to ‘postpone’ further. And now we’re here and I don’t really know how to deal with them.
Alongside the usual worries of a soon-to-be graduate, I am, as ever, worried about ‘chronically ill Anna’. I am worried that nobody will want to employ me because I am ill. I am worried that I will not be capable, strong enough, or even brave enough to be a successful employee of whatever the hell it may be. And whilst I am desperately trying to control this worry with everything I have learnt in therapy – I am also worried because in two weeks time I am being discharged from therapy. And I don’t know if I’m ready. I have come so far in the last few months, and I have felt so much better for it. But I am sort of comforted by the fact that my therapist is there, teaching me and helping me along the way. Will I ever be ready to face things on my own? Is anybody really ever ready for changes in life? Or is everybody scared, but just gets on with it anyway?
I don’t really have any answers to my questions – or a plan for how I’m going to overcome the worries I’m having at the moment. I’m always trying to increase my sense of certainty by controlling things, and making plans – but there will always be things that I will be uncertain about. And the only thing I can do about that, is try to increase my tolerance to uncertainty. So, instead of suppressing my worries – I’m facing them, trying to tell myself it’s okay to be uncertain of the future. I’m working on it everyday. I know that this blog post was a bit of a mind dump of all that I am feeling at the moment. But I hope it at least gives somebody a sense of comfort that they’re not alone.
I hope you are all as well as can be at the moment. Keep doing you!
Love,
Anna
xxxx
Chronically Learning 