Will April’s Showers Bring May Flowers?

Over the course of the past month, I have had to take a step back from my blog to focus on, well, figuring my life out. And while I was not entirely successful in that attempt, I will admit to have learned a thing or two along the way. April was a very, very unpredictable month for me. Many of the things I found comfort and routine in were lost to me, and I was met with a lot of change and uncertainty — which happen to be my least favorite things in the world. In all honesty, I’m not a very adaptable person when it comes to my personal life. I thrive off of structure and routine, and as I’m transitioning out of my college life and into a post-grad life, I haven’t had a whole lot of those two things.

Come come April, the routine I had created— along with the plan I had been carefully curating for my future — evaporated into thin air. I will be the first to admit, that college culture was not for me, but in many ways, my college life did have structure. For the past few weeks, for the first time since I was fourteen, I didn’t have to work (which is something that I’m incredibly grateful for). Then, halfway through the month, once I finished all my coursework, I also didn’t have any classes that I need to attend. So I had a lot of time on my hands to think about my life and wonder why the hell everything I had planned for the foreseeable future up and disappeared. This free time and constant overthinking left me feeling really defeated and for a few weeks, I didn’t really feel like rebuilding my life plan. Which is exactly when I realized that I didn’t have to entirely redesign an entire new life for myself. In fact, I ended up realizing that the more I try and control every aspect of my life (oftentimes down to the hour or day) the more frustrated and upset I’m going to be when things don’t work out the same way I imagined them to.

Unfortunately for me, this isn’t the kind of realization that you come to by reading about it in a book or watching a TikTok that tells you to ‘let go of all the worries in your life’. This kind of realization was bred out of tears and multiple days and nights spent thinking, calculating, and prying into your own mind to understand why things just aren’t going the way you expected them to. It wasn’t until then — and after lots of conversations with my friends and family — that I realized that I had been unknowingly self-sabotaging. By having such a structured view of my life and how everything has to happen, I was doing myself a huge disservice. I wasn’t letting myself enjoy the days I was actually living in.

Now, I’m not claiming to have relinquished my need for control over my life overnight…because I didn’t, and I haven’t, and it’s definitely going to be a battle I continue to fight going forward. However, going into May I have decided that I need to loosen up my grip on the future, and let it happen the way that it’s meant to. If you haven’t picked up on this throughout my previous posts, I’m not a “go with the flow” girl. I never have been. I find it incredibly difficult to “go with the flow,” so this plan to let life do its thing and enjoy the ride, has been the cause for a certain amount of discomfort in my life. Not the kind of discomfort that really takes over your day-to-day life, but more of a persistent uneasiness that comes with the territory of being a worrier. Ultimately, I don’t think worry is the kind of thing that most people can cut out of their lives entirely, especially when you’re transitioning into full-blown adulthood. As many of my graduating friends and I have discussed, nobody really prepares you for the period of time when you end college but before you start your adult life. Whether it be two weeks or six months, it’s still a time where you just are kind of there, existing, and ultimately doing a fair amount of worrying. While worry is a part of life that you can’t remove completely, it doesn’t have to be all-consuming and oftentimes, the worries that breed deep in the corners of your mind, don’t ever play out in real life.

I spent most of April worrying, crying, and trying to re-discover what I wanted from my life now that I’m at a crossroads where I’m able to do whatever it is that I want to do. To be completely honest, I haven’t even figured out what that might be yet, but my college career is over (at least for now). After three years of college being my life, that chapter of my book is closed. I’m going to walk across a huge stage in front of thousands of strangers and when I get to the other side, I get to choose where my path leads from there. It’s up to me! Which is both liberating and terrifying at the same time. So for the month of May, I’m going to figure out where my path is leading me for now. While it’s daunting to go into this next month not knowing what it will bring, I’m going to continue to fight the need to control the future, and just let it take me where I need to be.