When life feels impossible you may regret – deeply regret – big choices you’ve made that are now irrevocable (or seem that way).
You may grieve the choices you’ve made and all the paths that seem unavailable to you now. That person, that career, that down payment, that would-have-been child…
When life feels impossible you may wake up at 3am, content in sleep and then when your mind gains a shred of consciousness, your brain grabs hold of thoughts like a needle on a record player and starts whirling and remembering… zooming you out of the peace you felt while asleep and unconscious and spiraling you into anxiety for the rest of the sleepless morning…
When life feels impossible you may cry five times before 8am.
And apply multiple coats of undereye concealer to hide the puffiness before heading into work. And you wonder how on earth you’re going to get through the work day.
You rival the talents of Meryl Streep in acting OK just to get through the day. You watch the clock and think it will never reach 5pm…
When life feels impossible, you think your body – your stomach, your chest, your throat – can’t possibly hold any more of the hot heat of emotion you are feeling.
You may wonder how you thought things were hard before when they feel so much more vividly difficult and high stakes now…
When life feels impossible you may wonder how on earth your life got so terribly off track.
You may think to yourself, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way for me!”
You may think back on all the choice points you could have taken that might have led you to more stable finances, a happier marriage, a healthier body.
You look at your old college classmates on Instagram and regret that you didn’t go into finance, you didn’t stay with that guy from your dorm, that you didn’t join that then-little-known startup that became Facebook…
When life feels impossible you may find yourself watching The Handmaid’s Tale or Game of Thrones to reassure yourself that your life, while hard as hell right now, could hypothetically be worse…
When life feels impossible, you may look at other people.
In your office, in their cars next to yours on the commute – and wonder if they have it easier. No, you KNOW they have it easier. And you feel jealous and sad and angry about your own situation and having it so much harder…
When life feels impossible, people may say to you, “You’ll get through it. You’ll figure it out.”
And you think to yourself, what the hell does that mean? And yeah, I’ll figure it out because I have no choice but to figure it out and yet you still don’t know what that will look like…
