my last year of "fuck it we ball"

rambling about anxiety (yes, again)

the current life plan I’m working with

I don’t know if you’ve heard or anything, but we only have 4 months left of “fuck it we ball.” In case you’re not as chronically online as I am, I’m referencing the notes app screenshot that makes rounds every so often on social media, particularly near the end of the year. On it is a four year plan, spanning from 2022 to 2026. From 2022 to 2024 the agenda includes the previous mentioned “fuck it we ball.” The plans for 2025 are limited to “fully develop brain” and by 2026 it should go one of two ways. Either “if still insane, kill self” or “if normal, start podcast”.  I'm not sure who the original poster was or what credentials they have, likely none if we’re being realistic, but it seems like a sensible plan to me, so it felt appropriate to co-opt this timeline for myself. 

I don’t know that I’ve been “balling” per se, but I’ve certainly had my fun. 2022 was when I laid the foundation for who I am now as a person. I’ve partied, I’ve made fun projects, I read a ton of books and watched even more movies. I started friendships and ended them and learnt how to deal with that process. I started seeing a psychologist for my anxiety. I stopped seeing my psychologist. I got a job. I quit my job. Had awkward conversations that I really didn’t want to have. Made irresponsible decisions and dealt with the consequences. I’ve done many things I’m proud of and others not so much. I’ve also been tested by god or fate or the universe one too many times for my liking. Even though these years have proved more challenging than any of the ones before, and much more formative, I can’t help but feel like there’s still so much I don’t know, that I won’t ever know. Things I don’t have the capacity to handle. I feel like I should be given a handbook on how to be a proper adult, much like the Handbook for the Recently Deceased in Beetlejuice (1988).

This is worrisome for my self appointed timeline, since 2025 is fast approaching and I’m meant to develop my brain by then. By this date I’ll ostensibly also be a college graduate, and on the verge of turning 25. Even though the science is dodgy behind the study that says your frontal lobe is fully developed by this age and it turns out to be just a completely arbitrary number; I’d like to think that I’ll be a textbook case and by 25 I’ll have a brain working at full capacity regardless, and things will make more sense. 

Despite all of this, recently I’ve felt more like an adult than ever before, though that doesn’t mean much. I distinctly remember, when trying to help a friend through one of the aforestated friend break ups, I had a clarity of mind on the subject that I had never felt before. It was like all the lights turned on in my brain and suddenly I knew how an adult with control over the full range of her emotions would handle the situation, so I did. Ever since then, there’s an assuredness I hold over myself, that I have the capacity to deal with whatever may come my way. But this confidence is wobbly at best, a false bravado to cover the seemingly never ending naivety and unsureness that coats my decision-making. Because, in a very real way, what the fuck do I know about anything?

I know certainty in myself will come to me with time and the more I continue to live my life, but I’m also acutely aware that you never truly know everything, can’t feasibly be prepared for every eventuality. This concern towards the maturity of my gray matter doesn’t as much stem from woes of achieving this and that in any career, creative or academic endeavor as it does with my brain’s ability to self regulate. In my “fuck it we ball” years I've made progress in acknowledging and working on my short comings. I’ve put in effort towards my own healing that felt gargantuan and herculean. Yet, lately more so than ever, I have felt the looming threat of regression to issues I thought I’d dealt with and long buried. Realistically, I know these things come back up, a person is not like a hard drive where you can just delete all unwanted information and start anew. But, shouldn’t being a year short of a developed brain, fingers crossed, mean I would get better at these things, not worse?

Through all the work I put in, I’m thankfully capable of understanding what triggers me. I know I'm not great at transitional periods. The comfort of what I’ve come to know for the past 5 years is quickly coming to a close and I know I’ll be thrown in at the deep end into the actual real world. I thrive on routine and heavily resent being taken out of my comfort zone, so the destabilization I’ve been experiencing has been dizzying, to call it something nice, rather than fucking terrifying. But what actionable steps, other than remaining stagnant for my whole life, can be done to ease my worried mind in a world where the only thing certain is uncertainty. 

Back to the timeline though, I still have a year and four months to figure it out. I don’t think there will be some secret remedy other than actively facing those things that I know I can get better at or that scare the life out of me, apprehensive as I may be. I know midnight on my 25th birthday won’t flip a magical switch in my brain that’ll cure all my ailments and make me a reasonable, level headed person. I am holding on to hope, though, that maybe that marker of physical growth, and another year of lived experience, will denote mental and emotional growth as well. Regardless, if by 2026 I’m still not where I think I should be, I like to imagine I won’t actually kill myself or that I won’t start a podcast either, god forbid.