Happy Birthday! You Don’t Know Who You Are!
Graphic by Mairany Garcia
It's October 18, 2019 and you’re me.
You’ve just turned 18 and suddenly your life seems more unnerving now, as if you just stepped over an invisible threshold you’ve always known was there but never understood why. You just started college and you’ve decided to live at home because maybe you got a scholarship but the idea of college terrifies you. In addition, you just quit your job because you constantly had anxiety attacks in the break room but now you’re debating if your mental health was worth it. It’s also around 1 a.m. and you’ve just finished sobbing because the fear of growing old gnaws at your brain and you can’t seem to go to sleep.
In simple terms, you’re going through it.
It’s October 18, 2019 and you’re me and so to distract you from whatever you have yet to fix, you go on Instagram. You’re scrolling to maybe to see the cute dog page you follow but instead you find posts of your friends living their picture perfect lives; and you’re really trying to be happy for them because they deserve the world, but now you’re sad again.
So, you exit the app and go to Twitter. Only this time you find a tweet so funny you start crying and you don’t really know if it’s because it’s funny or you’re merely sad and looking for an excuse to cry.
Then you stop and realize, “Oh god, I didn't take any birthday pictures and now I don’t have enough time to think of a good enough caption to go with the post even if I do. So now, how is anyone supposed to know I just turned 18 and I’m doing just as fine as they are?”
Sometime later that day, you find it in you to think of a caption to go with a birthday selfie (one about growth! about learning to let go! But you don’t feel any of it before you impulsively delete all of your social media.
You think you feel empty now that you deleted yourself off the internet, but then realize that maybe that emptiness has always been there.
You can stop imagining this now and give yourself a pat on the back because congratulations! You just experienced “The day I realized I didn’t know who I’d become because social media had messed with the perception of myself along the way!”
Okay so maybe not a congratulations, but more of a sad smile. The one the best friend of the main character in that coming of age film gives to them when they need to figure out this one on their own. Only, neither know how to even begin unpacking the situation.
So let me start with this:
On the internet, I was a carefree! I was someone who loved sunrises, poetry, books, and iced-coffee in the mornings! On the internet, I was someone with a smile on their face every hour of the day, overflowing with positivity and happiness!
So whenever I failed to meet that expectation — whether it was being terrified about going to college and if I even wanted to go, crying in the bathrooms after work because my anxiety was getting the better of me, or I felt like I was wasting my time unlike everyone else who was growing up and making their life worth growing old for — I felt as if I was a fraud.
Everyone else seemed to have it figured out, so why couldn’t I? Why was I having such a hard time trying to put myself together? Why was I falling behind? Why was I not them?
At some point while I was trying to be the person I thought everyone was, I fell out of touch with myself.
To me, everyone was having the time of their lives. Grabbing each opportunity within their reach, always knowing what they wanted, no thoughts of being afraid but simply just going forward in life knowing who they were.
To me everyone was doing just fine and it didn’t make sense.
And then randomly it did.
It would be when I was sitting in the Starbucks doing my work and I would casually hear a group of friends talking about how stressful their lives were.
I specifically remember the time someone was talking about getting a divorce in the middle of a Target line.
Another time, as I was in philosophy 101, someone was talking about how their father had passed away and still felt sadness even though immortality was never promised to them and that this was life.
Whenever moments like this happened, I would try to imagine how I would feel if I knew these people and just happened to hear their problems. I would treat them the way I never did treat myself whenever I was going through problems — with care, patience, and a warm smile. I would let them know I was there for them even if they felt like they were alone.
The biggest lesson I learned throughout the months and these small encounters was that social media doesn’t comprise anyone.
I figured that if I knew who they were and I searched up their social media, I wouldn’t find a trace of whatever emotions they were currently carrying.
No one wants to share about how they failed at something. How stressed out they are that they can’t sleep anymore. How much sadness they feel or how they have no idea what they’re doing in life and how terrifying that is. And no matter how much we choose to share on social media, it can never give us insight into the pains of growing someone is going through. It can’t explain to you the complex feelings any human, especially young people, at any given rate goes through.
When we start to believe in how many views, likes, or comments someone gets on social media and equate it to how they’re doing in terms of how well they’re doing in life or even applying it to your own self-image, that’s when you lose all the meaning in yourself.
No amount of likes, pictures, or stories you post will tell you if you're doing great or how poorly you’re doing in life. I mean just take a look at the post of the egg on Instagram that racked up 54 million likes. It’s still an egg at the end of the day, just like how everyone else is going to continue going through life searching for who they are or what they want at the end of the day.
Giving myself time to learn this lesson seemed like an eternity, but slowly I began posting. Until one day, I decided to give myself time to learn how to find the part of me that I knew I had lost while trying to make myself seem picture perfect.
It wasn’t until last month when I felt ready to be more active on my socials again and although this might not seem like a big deal, it was to me. At one point it had defined how I felt for months and made me spiral in anxiety.
However, this time it felt different.
I had spent time doing things I once forgot I loved. Journaling. Crafting. Reading books. Watching movies. Writing.
I don’t know how to drive yet but some nights I got my parents car keys and turned on the radio, pretending the Arizona sun hadn’t set yet, and played Lorde and just sang.
Some days finding out who I was again took nights of loneliness and staring at white walls in my room. Other days it was covering the walls up with posters of people and things I missed.
The beginning of 18 felt like a fever dream. One I didn’t know whether or not I would wake up from. When I eventually did, it was comforting.
Having something define you and then suddenly having that taken away or realizing it can be bad is difficult. You have to learn how to adapt and readjust and just like all things in life, it takes time.
I still think sometimes my life is moving too slow. That I’m a failure compared to everyone else I follow. That I’m not there and somehow everyone else is.
Those are the days I let my phone breathe and my mind rest and think about the stories of people I hear at Starbucks, in the library, and the ones I make up in my head about strangers.
SometimesI think about how if this were a coming of age movie, the best friend of the main character would smile the way they only do when they’ve overcome some big obstacle and are still healing to make it right again.