Bend, don't break

I was g-chatting with a friend who’s about to leave for Africa on a year-long fellowship the other day. Our conversation followed an increasingly well-known outline: festering self-doubt, anxiety, stress and feelings of being incredibly overwhelmed just getting through your pre-departure to do list and saying your goodbyes. Questions about whether this is the right thing. Questions about where we’ll be next year. Questions about what kind of lifestyle we really want. And I wondered, do these kind of questions consume everyone, or just us expat types who can’t seem to sit still and are seeking out the next challenge, responding to the next natural disaster. I have to imagine that these thoughts plague the minds of most people my age, they just manifest differently. Don’t women about to embark on motherhood, or men who are taking on new jobs for the good of their families, don’t they all struggle with these existential questions? Don’t we all make sacrifices to do what we do? Maybe it’s just easier for the likes of me to contemplate these things endlessly because there’s nothing tying me down. I have the available mental space to sit around wondering if I’m fulfilled enough. But I also have to ask, do I really want my job to define me? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

I’m not gonna lie. This transition has been a bit of a bruiser. Maybe it’s my age. The things that excited me about travelling the world and doing development work at 23 just don’t get my engines revved like they used to. Perhaps I just have a bad case of Africa fatigue. It’s the same old frustrations, new country. And I wonder if it’s that particular element that seems to be driving me into these uncontrollable spirals of self-doubt. You knew what you were getting yourself into, so why lug around a bad case of the doom and glooms? I will say I’m a phenomenally lucky women that I have support from far-reaching corners of the globe. I have my amazing parents and siblings who have heard it all before, yet never fail to give me encouraging words. I have friends who have suffered through the same questions and lived the same dreams and have found themselves standing at the same crossroads. Knowing you’re not alone in the process certainly helps, and just feeling love and compassion from people who know you well and know your patterns even better.

The constant renegotiations are exhausting. The ping pong brain. The self-doubt. The questions. I realized today (with a lot of help from my friends) that I just need to let go. Not be so damn hard on myself. Allow this time to pass without overanalyzing the extreme highs and lows I’ll inevitably feel for the next few months. Allow myself to sit in whatever I need to sit in, but don’t wallow in it. Dust myself off, try again tomorrow. Seek small victories. Appreciate the relationships I’m building. Move forward, little by little, day by day. And eventually, those nagging feelings will subside and I’ll wake up one day and everything will feel ok. Better than ok, even. There will be the slightest shift in the universe, the subtle turning of a corner, and the way we view things will be transformed, ever so mildly. And you’ll recognize that you are good again. That familiar feeling of strength will replace the familiarity of doubt. Resilience will substitute for despair. Peace will recover from turmoil. I very much look forward to that day, and until then, will just keep swimming through mud.