Your Biggest Fear In Your Early 20s

We’ve been prepped for extraordinary lives.

Your commencement speaker told you anything was possible. So did your advisor, over coffee in your last few weeks of your undergraduate career. Great things are ahead, they said.

So after college, you move. You pick a new city. You settle into your first apartment. New place, new roommates. Find a new relationship. A new job. It sinks in: This is your life now. Your new, real life.

It’s supposed to be magical. It’s everything you’ve been working for. It falls short and just seems ordinary. Basic, even.

The years following college graduation are anticlimactic. We’ve put so much emphasis on the theoretical future, that we’re lost when it comes to the practical application. We’ve been training, like athletes looking ahead to the Olympics. We have our eyes on gold. A golden job opportunity, or finally being reunited with our significant other. As happens in the Olympics, not everyone wins gold.

We fear mediocrity.

Your life’s purpose up until this point has been preparatory. In middle school, you took accelerated math courses and sought the coveted spots in gifted and talented programs. You were pushed to read at a ninth grade level. The first two years of high school were about getting into the right AP courses and extracurriculars so that you’d be set for junior year, when you started looking for colleges. You applied, categorized, studied and vetted. You got in.

You went off to college. Four years preparing you for one of two things: graduate school, or real life. (Or both.)

College is over in a montage of tears, hugs and well wishes at graduation. You didn’t just spend 4 years preparing for your “real life.” You spent 22 years preparing. So it needs to culminate in something amazing. You’ve been given every opportunity, and now you’re going to put it to good use.

And that’s the problem with being given every opportunity. We are so fortunate to have gone to college, and thankful to our families, but there’s pressure that comes with being given the world. It’s a conditional gift. It’s waiting for you to do something with it.

And you’re scared you can’t. You’re scared you’ll fuck it up somehow. You’re scared that in your search for greatness, you’ll land at mediocre and settle.

These are the years when you question everything.

We start our first job, need more money, move to the next job. Do the entry-level thing. You love it. Or, no, that’s right, you actually wanted to kill yourself. Our mothers and fathers worked grueling office jobs so that we could pursue our dreams. Instead, we are beginning our pursuit of the same shitty office jobs and it feels wrong.

We start dating someone – or we graduate with our college or high school sweetheart by our side. Is this it? Now that we’re in real life mode, do we move in and get married?

We’re scared of calling it too soon. We’re scared to get comfortable in our relationship, because what if it’s not right? What if we’re just holding onto a relationship because it’s the only constant we have?

We can’t commit to a location. It may not be the right one for our career. Our soulmate may be waiting across the country and what if we pick the wrong place and never find the right person? We worry we’ll be stuck in our dead-end jobs 20 years from now. We are scared we’ll end up in a loveless marriage.

We’re scared our decisions will be set in stone.

They won’t. So right now, in the midst of all this confusion, you need to just make a decision. Stop complaining about your choices and start following through. Pick a city. Maybe the right guy isn’t waiting for you there, but the wrong guy is and maybe he’ll be more fun. If you’re trying to pick a job, stop griping and choose based on your instinct. If you don’t have the support of your parents or friends right away, trust that it will come. The worst that can happen is that your instincts fail you and you leave that job.

This uncertainty won’t last forever and your decisions are less permanent than you think they are. You aren’t a victim of your own choices unless you let yourself become one. Anything can change as long as you aren’t stagnant.

So look at your life in this moment and decide what you want to keep. Do you want to hold on to your relationship? Do you want to pursue the field you’re in? Purge your life of the things weighing you down. If you’re struggling with a choice, remember that you are only non-committal when you aren’t actually excited about what you’re committing to. Commitment is easier when you know it’s what you want.

As clichéd as it sounds, great things really are ahead. Maybe you’re going to accomplish all of your career goals, maybe you’ll realize you have none and will have to tear apart everything you’ve learned. Either way, there’s an amazing journey ahead.

Originally posted on Thought Catalog.

12 Texts Girls Send When They’re Trying To Friend Zone You

1. The “Have a good night!” text.

People read this as flirty and think it opens the door up to a “sweet dreams baby”-type response. No. Wrong. She doesn’t want to dream about you. She’s politely trying to end the conversation. “Have a good night” does not mean she is going to sleep thinking about you. It’s a world away from “Good night ;).”

2. The “Work is crazy right now talk to you later” text.

There’s no apology, nor is there any punctuation. That’s because it’s a text sent from one friend to another. This isn’t an invitation for you to say, “oh no, bad week? I can come over and make it better.” Really, it’s just a text she sends when she has better things to do than respond to you.

3. The less-than-5-word text.

This is a strategic way to avoid blatantly ending the conversation. She doesn’t want to be rude so this exit is disguised as a participatory response.

Example: A guy tells a joke and the girl responds, “oh lol!” She’s not necessarily discouraging you, but she didn’t leave anywhere for the conversation to go. She’s hoping you stop responding first so she doesn’t have to.

4. The “Can’t talk now, I’m having a girls night” text.

This is a real thing. Sometimes girls like to gather and decide that “no boys allowed” includes anyone on the receiving end of their texts. To be honest though, if a lady’s really into you she’ll find a way around that rule or she’ll definitively say that she intends to text you back later.

5. The after the fact response.

Sample conversation:

Potential suitor: Hey, are you free this Friday? Maybe we could have a drink.
Girl (on Sunday): Sorry, this week totally got away from me! Did you have a good weekend?

6. The response that pushes for a group hang out.

If this happens to you, accept it: She’s not interested in you sexually. She really just likes you as a friend. So she strategically only invites you to things she knows will become group events. This is the text that reads, “Hey, I can’t do drinks on Friday but (insert mutual friend here) is having a party Saturday. You should come!” If she wanted to sleep with you, she’d be trying to see you one-on-one.

7. The “Hey, how’s everything going?” text, in response to you starting a conversation.

It seems like she’s interested in you when she’s receptive to your text. In reality, it only proves that you don’t bore her as a person. If a girl is into you, she’ll make it known by asking what you’re up to this weekend, etc.

8. The half-response text.

In which she engages only on the part of your text that’s safe to respond to. Sample conversation:

Guy: Hey, how’s your week going? Do you maybe want to grab a drink with me on Friday?
Girl: Mine’s great so far, how’s yours?

9. The text that evades setting an exact date and time.

When you ask if she’d like to get drinks sometime, it’s easier for her to say yes to some vague plans in the distant future. The initiator (understandably) takes that as a “yes” and then tries to set a specific time at which point the girl mysteriously “loses her iPhone” for a week.

10. The text that grossly overuses exclamation points.

When she’s flirting with you, she’ll use exclamation points sparingly. When she feels guilty that she isn’t interested, she’ll over compensate with 3+ exclamation points. Sample response: I have no idea what my schedule is like this week, life is soOOOooOo crazy!!!!

11. The text that deliberately classifies you as, “friend,” “bud” or “pal”

If she were actually into you, she’d be way too embarrassed to use nicknames. But she isn’t, so she’s calling you “friend” because she wants to JUST BE FRIENDS.

12. Radio silence

(Read: Not interested. BYE.)

Originally posted on Thought Catalog.

To Those Studying Abroad, Go Have Sex

I didn’t move to Paris because it was something I’d dreamed about as a little girl. I went because I wouldn’t know anyone and I wanted to be surrounded by a language that wasn’t English. I had a small advantage – my family speaks fluent French – but mine is a shaky mess of jumbled pronouns and unconjugated verbs and bears traces of a Canadian accent.

I was reserved. Something about the harsh winter air and subdued Parisian personalities pushed me into my shell. I wanted to be daring, but it didn’t come naturally. Luckily, I fell into a good group of friends and felt more at home.

My closest friend began a flirtation with our professor. (It’s France, what did you expect?) I admired her boldness. I was too timid to approach any man in France – for fear of roofies and physical attention from anyone that wasn’t a boy I’d known for three years.

Finally, I became frustrated with my own self-censorship.

We went out on an uncharacteristically warm night, to a spot in the 10th arrondissment. It wasn’t a touristy area – no one was speaking English. I saw him almost immediately. He was tall, with a strong jawline and a smile that was familiar. (You know, when you see someone and their grin makes you feel like you’ve seen their face before?) He was pushing 30. I had just turned 20. Again, it’s France.

I wouldn’t approach him, or even move in his direction. In true middle school fashion, a friend physically pushed me into him. He caught me. I tried to emulate the pleasantly windswept look women pull off in movies, but was unsuccessful. I got out a “je m’excuse,” but before I could shuffle off, he coaxed my head upward and I couldn’t help it. I wanted to stay.

He came over a few days later, after a multitude of texts exchanged in broken English and grammatically incorrect French. I made friends go down to greet him and assess whether or not he might be a serial killer. He wasn’t. He was lovely. He brought wine.

I didn’t have wine glasses. I didn’t even have real furniture and I sure as fuck didn’t have a clue what I was doing with this beautiful man in my apartment. We talked and talked until I’d physically run out of things I could say in French (which surprisingly, took a few hours). When I’d run out of conversation topics, and figured I couldn’t keep my charm going much longer, I did what I’d want to do all along. I kissed him.

It escalated from there. Though not quickly, because in France you’re taught to savor not only your meals and your wine, but your sex too.

I don’t think I said much for the (insanely long) duration – there was truly no reason to interrupt him. What was I going to say? “T’as fini?”

If there was something I wanted to express, I didn’t need to do it verbally.

It is a very surreal experience to have sex in a language you don’t really speak, in a city that is not your own, with a man you don’t really know. But it was beautiful, in a way that nothing else in Paris was – which is saying something, because every inch of Paris is filled with beauty and I’d just like to publicly apologize to Monsieur Rodin, for the sacrilege of valuing this experience more than his museum.

I never saw my Frenchman again. It was just those two times – the night we met the night I had him over to my tiny studio in the 14th. I never reached out – I didn’t want to. Every romantic experience I’ve ever had came with baggage, but that night was perfect. I didn’t ever want to do anything to tarnish that memory.

The point to all of this isn’t that you should fly to Paris and jump the first garçon with a beard and skinny jeans. The point is that on any given day, you can have an experience you never thought you were capable of having. You can approach someone and make them fall for you. It’s an empowering thought – even if you don’t go home with them.

You don’t need sex to have a fulfilling study abroad – but you have to go experience something. Anything that elicits a feeling you’ve never had before. This is the one time in your life when you have no rules. Your financial concerns are minimal, you’re in good health and all the terrors of transition are muted because you know you’re going home in four months.

Stop shutting yourself out because you don’t speak the same language as everyone around you. Stop shying away from experiences you aren’t fearless enough to have. Don’t let your predispositions get in your way.

Get lost in Paris. Take a flight to Milan because it’s 9 Euros. Let an elderly Italian man teach you his language at a coffee shop, as you lean up against the coffee bar and drink your miniscule cappuccino. Go to a country you never thought you’d have any interest in and be amazed by its history.

Be braver. Beautiful things happen when you stop being scared of unfamiliar experiences.

 

Originally posted on Thought Catalog.

How Adulthood Makes You Believe You’re Entitled to be Selfish

Kindness is an underrated virtue. It’s more robust than being “sweet.” It doesn’t mean you move through life beaming, it means you don’t sneer and you genuinely try to do right by others.

This year, for the first time, I’ve noticed my kindness falter. I’ve noticed the roughness of a big city rub off on me. I’ve seen myself come to a crossroads and elect to go the selfish route. I’ve been burned by one too many shitty drivers, cutting me off because it behooves them and their agenda. I’ve learned from their example. So now I cut people off and mutter that it was my turn anyway.

I try to exude my old, schoolgirl patience. I fail and instead, I abandon patience and snap at the Bank of America attendant I’m on the phone with because I’m annoyed that a small issue turned into a 40-minute phone call. Adulthood governs that time is too precious for such activities.

Is it possible that in effort to stick up for myself in the city and the real world, I’ve gone too far? My kindness is on hiatus and has taken my softest smile and my patience along with it. My patience is gone because now when I’m late to things it’s actually a problem. My lateness can no longer be remedied by a note from my mother that I can hand over to my homeroom teacher.

This sudden selfishness stems from the realization that working 9-6, paying bills on time, and trying to foster relationships all at the same time is hard work. We didn’t bank on it being this difficult. We were warned, but we never truly believed it because Facebook said otherwise. Facebook revealed pictures of those who graduated before us at a local pub, with captions filled with buzzwords like “loft” and “studio” and “gin and tonic” and “latte” and “sunset.” Our naiveté kicked in and we thought growing up would be easy.

It isn’t. Our conflicts do not end with punch line, as they did on “Friends.” Adulthood does not allow for a nightly trip to MacLaren’s pub. Robin Sherbatsky wouldn’t have been able to afford a cab back to Brooklyn every night IRL.

So we lose our patience, because we can’t afford to buy the perfect work wardrobe yet. We lose some of our kindness, because we are taught as millennials that it’s our responsibility to “get ours.” In our haste to have it all, we become brusque.

It’s no longer my instinct to drop everything to rush to another’s aid. Now I have to remind myself to put others first, because over the past year, my mind has been trained to think otherwise.

We’ve been told over and over and over to put ourselves first to get ahead, or risk being left behind.

We must keep reminding ourselves to be a little more selfless. We used to have that reminder built into our daily lives. We volunteered in college. We gave back to the community, because we wanted to – or because it was court mandated. We got into tight spots and our parents came to our rescue. There were constant reminders that we live hashtag BLESSED lives.

I used to get a reminder twice a week, when I volunteered at the Cancer Resource Center, between work shifts. A reminder that came when a patient’s eyes told me that my presence had brought their day up in a way they’d forgotten was possible.

Yet now, we think we’re the victims. We are burdened by the everyday struggles of adjusting to real life, and it’s hard. It makes us impatient. It makes us selfish. And with this negative energy pushing into our psyche, we forget to be grateful.

Instead, I remember to be bitter about taxes. I see the number at the top of my pay stub, then I see all the deductions, and then I see the actual number on my paycheck. My first inclination is to be annoyed. Not grateful for a paycheck. Not grateful for money to pay rent.

And then I’m immediately disgusted by myself, because I know better. I believe in the practice of paying taxes based on your income, and now I’m just whining.

Am I becoming selfish, or worse, a Republican? Or am I just growing up?

The solution exists in our will to make a change. My kindness will take the place of this newfound selfishness because I want it to. It won’t happen because I get a raise, or my dream job. We often think that will be the case, that we’ll be our best selves when everything in our life has fallen into place. When making rent is no longer a challenge and when we’ve found a life partner. Not necessarily. All of that would be nice, but the shift in our character has to be internal.

Ridding the selfishness, and restoring the kindness will not be an immediate shift. We don’t always change for the better, but the negative changes won’t last, unless we let them.

 

Originally published on Thought Catalog.

A 6 Step Guide to having an Anxiety Attack and Still Making it to Work on Time

 

When you’re on an anxiety kick, your thoughts gain momentum and your speedometer goes from zero to 100 in a matter of seconds. You leave rational thought in the dust and barrel toward breathing-into-a-paper-bag status. For those of you that have never experienced this feeling, it’s comparable to that time you took too much adderall and thought you were having heart palpitations. (What? You didn’t do that junior year of college?)

Eventually, it subsides and real life comes crashing back into the picture.

And that’s when it hits me: I’m gonna be so late for work.

Anxiety wasn’t always a morning thing for me. When I first moved to LA, it was whenever I hit traffic. (Something about that feeling of going nowhere on the 405, and not being able to do anything about it, sent me reeling.) As a kid, it was around meal times. I’m sure one of these days it’ll move back to the before dinner slot, an old favorite.

We always talk about anxiety like it happens when you’re alone, in a corner, in a dark room. The fact is, you could be overcome by anxiety in public, and no one would ever know it.  And because it’s internal, the moment it’s passed is no different from the moment before to anyone else.

You’ve just got to go with it. It’s a bizarre thing to be shaking one minute and walking into work the next. Making pleasantries about cereal choices and bad coffee feels different when you’re still trying to steady your heart rate.

All too often I get asked: “Have you tried meditating, yet?”

Absolutely, I have. (I respond with an unjustified amount of sass, because I’m Indian and my people were meditating centuries before hot yoga came to Hollywood, thank you very much.)

Meditation is a great solution, but the key is to let thoughts pass when they come to you. On the flip side, anxiety works by snatching concerning thoughts that pass and multiplying them. So, if you can pull off meditation, it’s incredibly helpful. If you can’t, you’re just sitting there, with good posture, while the need for peace and the need to freak-out wage war on your mind. It’s a great recipe for a splitting headache.

I’m not giving up on meditation any time soon, but I’m trying a new tactic. If you can’t tame your thoughts or push them away, then it’s better to channel your energy in to other things when you feel the anxiety coming on. You’re not giving your mind the opportunity to go spiraling into the deep end if you’re consumed in something else. A few things to try in lieu (or in addition) to meditation:

1. Cook

Get lost in chopping vegetables. Follow a recipe. Learn to poach eggs… it requires more concentration than you think.

2. Read or write

Lose yourself tapping away on your keyboard, reading an interesting article, or even revisiting Gone Girl for the third time. In the morning, I routinely read the news before starting my work, and it helps steady my day.

3. Listen to comedy

It really works to quell traffic anxiety. It’s also how I developed a huge crush on John Mulaney. You can find comedy radio on Pandora or Spotify.

4. Stop scrolling

I often scroll through Facebook unconsciously, but don’t actually process, which leaves my mind to wander in a negative direction. Instead, click on one of the articles someone’s posted and read it. Play with filters and post a picture to Instagram. Do whatever will make you more engaged.

5. Move

Stretch. Do yoga in your living room. Jump up and down. Generally when anxiety starts to set in, I stop moving. Break the trend and go do a handstand and it’ll remind you to not let the anxiety take over.

6. Clean

I’ve heard others say this works for them. I’m jealous. It’s never worked for me. Instead, I just have anxiety and an apartment that desperately needs to be vacuumed. So if it does work for you, hats off.

It also helps if you can realize that while some of the concerns we encounter are very serious, occasionally we all have some ridiculous freak-outs. Try to laugh at yourself. (On more than one occasion, I’ve had someone remark on how concerned I look standing in the middle of a Trader Joes. It’s never not hilarious.) I don’t care how cliché it sounds: Smiling really does relieve tension.

Originally published on Thought Catalog.

There is Only One Appropriate Reaction to Brittany Maynard’s Passing

When Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was told she could still have up to 10 years to live. Two months later, she learned her cancer was stage four, giving her 6 months to live. She moved her family from California to Oregon, one of the five states to allow people with a terminal illness to end their own lives. At the time of her diagnosis, the 29-year-old had just celebrated her first year of marriage and was looking to start a family.

Brittany Maynard ended her life, as planned, on November 1. There were whispers that she would extend the date, but she chose to pass 2 days after her husband’s birthday as she’d intended. Her story was publicized because she wanted to raise awareness and push political action in California and across the nation.

 Now it’s less than a week after her death and all people can talk about is how it played on social media. All reports can say is that Chris Christie opposes the right-to-die measure. (Really? Who’s finding that surprising?)

Yes, Brittany Maynard wanted to start a conversation, but could we all show a little respect first?

Suicide implies that you chose death when you could have chosen life. For Brittany, choosing life wasn’t an option. That option was taken off the table by stage four brain cancer. After moving to Oregon, she was given the prescription pills that would end her life and kept them in a safe place for when she needed them. It provided comfort to her.

And it doesn’t matter whether you or I think that’s a bad thing or not.

For the past 6 months as Brittany Maynard’s traveled with her loved ones and experienced life’s beauty before she couldn’t anymore, we’ve been screaming about politics. Catholic groups think that Brittany’s committed a mortal sin. Can you imagine being 29 and terrified at the fact that your best option is to take your own life? Then try adding the fact that half the country thinks you’re going to hell because of your decision. Whether or not you support the Death with Dignity Act, it’s important to remember how much courage this woman showed.

Then there’s the left, who are saying, look! See! We told you these laws were necessary. This is equally unhelpful. Now is not the time to cheerlead death.

The only appropriate reaction right now is respect. The only words that should be coming out of people’s mouths are some variation of, “I’m so sorry for Brittany’s struggles, and for her family’s loss.”

I get that this won’t happen. I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be nice if we all remembered for one moment that we don’t know what it’s like to be one of the countless people in this world suffering from a terminal illness?

I have an opinion on Brittany’s situation, but I don’t know if it’s the right opinion because I don’t know what it’s like to contract a terminal illness and be told I have 6 months to live. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you don’t either. So let’s all stop pretending that we know what’s best in this situation. We don’t.

 

Originally published on Thought Catalog.