I always thought that being busy equaled being happy. That’s how I was raised, that’s who my mom is and who she taught me how to be. I have watched her work her 12 hour days and be ruined by them and become someone who I know she doesn’t want to be. To be fair, she’s always been pretty high strung and has never been the most soft mother that has ever existed. And I always thought I wouldn’t turn out like her, I promised myself that I wouldn’t. But here we are, I am 21, and I feel like all I know how to do is work. When I was younger I used to obsess over being busy, I wanted to work from the time that I was 12. And even through college for some reason I have had this idea that if I wasn’t working the hardest out of everybody that I knew I wasn’t worth the time, or I wasn’t doing enough. And that has landed me in a spot where I am working two jobs as a full-time student, and balancing out the few relationships that I have as well as trying to maintain any semblance of a social life and also my sanity.

I used to dream about having two jobs in (I am realizing I was very weird as a kid) college and being able to say “yeah I did that”. I was one of the ones she was a full-time student but still balance two jobs and they didn’t work. I worked for what I got. Well, now that I’m here, obviously I’m miserable. I’m lonely, I live seven hours away from the friends that I had, I’m making so many more errors, and I’m always stressed out. The funny part is, when I wasn’t working and just doing school, I was also miserable. I barely made it to classes. And I’m starting to realize that this isn’t an issue of being a workaholic or being lazy or being my mother. This is an issue that I have with feeling like I’m never enough for anything. And that’s something that I have to work on and learn how to be OK in spite of my fear of not being enough. I haven’t even started that work yet, but I will.

However, right now I just want to wallow and shout this into the void where there’s no consequence, not the real ones. I’ll figure it out eventually, but for now I just need to be sad for a little bit. And I’m thankful the subs like this exist so I don’t have to be scared that someone won’t understand me in real life or I’ll say everything wrong and miscommunicated ad o most often do.