I am your typical type A personality type. Uptight, workaholic whose worth is only determined by her productivity and results.

Now I’ve always been this way without even noticing. In 2019 my actions finally caught up with me. I was not producing the same results. By results I mean marks. I was not getting the same grades I used to get. I was not a straight A student anymore.

With that realisation, I had my first existential crisis and I slipped into depression. Being a straight A student was my entire personality so if I was not a straight A student then who the fuck was I??

I stayed in bed all the time. I cried every night and I held back tears all day. It was terrible. I felt helpless, hopeless and so alone. After months of feeling like this I found YouTube. I watched videos about this and found out I had symptoms of depression. Everybody in my life thought mental health was a joke so I couldn’t get help.

I took it upon myself to get myself going again. I wanted to “cure” my depression. This is how I got sucked into the world of personal development. I started journalling, meditating, reading self-help books and all that good stuff.

I got better, I wasn’t holding back tears all day anymore. As time went on I was smiling and laughing and not hating my life.

My marks got better. I was a straight A student again with the highest GPA in my class. How did I do that you ask?? I hustled. See, when I got into the self-development world I got introduced to hustle culture disguised as productivity. I was listening to those motivational speeches, you know the ones where the person is shouting. WORK WHILE YOUR FRIENDS ARE SLEEPING. Yeah, those.

I took the advice to heart and I drank a lot of caffeine around my bedtime and pulled all nighters. I competed with roommates on who would stop studying first and go to sleep and I always won. I was not getting any sleep and I was proud of myself for that. Extremely proud.

I thought that that was self-love and that I had cured my depression but oh boy oh boy!!!

I didn’t realize that instead of fixing the problem which was that I hated myself and I didn’t think I was enough and that my worth was determined by my marks. I postponed that problem. I put a bandaid on it and I postponed it.

So 2020 I went through a phase of being like done with school. I couldn’t make myself care about school anymore. I had a passion for writing. I wrote on this blog and I started writing novels which I never finished and screenplays which again, I didn’t finish. I was trapped on the “I hate school” part of YouTube.

During lessons I was thinking about the characters I was making up, the plot and why the fuck the education system didn’t evolve. Why we were taught exactly the same way even though we are all individuals. So I was like fuck school, fuck marks, let me live my life. And of course my marks reflected that mindset and I didn’t care.

By the time 2021 rolled around I had adopted a new mindset. I was like I am done working hard, I am going to work smart. I am actually going to have a life outside of school and I am going to live my life how I see fit.

Your world is as big as you make it and I wanted my world to be huge. In this year I focused on many different things. I picked up reading again (not just self-help books), I learnt how to draw, I wrote a short comedy scripts, I wrote on my blog, I watched You Tube videos about psychology, I worked out daily, I drank 3 litres of water, I took myself on dates, I had a boyfriend (this is a huge deal) and I watched a lot of movies.

I ditched the mindset that sleep is for losers and I started sleeping a lot. I acknowledged the fact that what I was doing to myself in 2019 was indeed abuse. I made friends and actually sat and chatted with them. I was the happiest I have ever been.

How were marks you ask?? Well, they were the best they have ever been!!

By the time 2022 rolled around I had fucked up my mindset again. I had adopted the hustle culture and I have been paying for it ever since.

I am doing my senior year in highschool and that is a huge deal, apparently. I was told to work hard, the marks you get will determine the future you will have. I was told get rid of your friends and everything and everyone and focus on studying. I was told to sacrifice my sleep and everything for school. I was told to spend every minute studying.

So did, I did everything they told me to do. I cut everybody out, I stopped writing, I stopped journalling, I stopped working out, I stopped sleeping and I stopped reading. I studied all the time.

And… I got depressed. Extremely depressed. Then, I was confused cause I have cut everything out and I am living how a matric student is supposed to be living but I feel awful.

My mental health got to it’s worst. I struggled to get out of bed, let alone go to school. Studying was the last thing I wanted to do. I got extremely terrible anxiety.

I then realized the problem was that I was no longer living. I no longer felt alive. That was a huge thing for me because I vowed to never sleep walk through life again. And also a misalignment of values. I value growth in all aspects of my life, inner harmony, intergrity and amusement.

I am most amused when my life entails all the things I love like laughing, learning new things, working out, writing, reading and goofing off with my friends. That is when I feel alive.

I also realized that I was letting everybody tell me what I should be aspiring for this year and I was letting them tell me how to live my life.

I am the expert on my life so I don’t know why the fuck I was letting other people tell me how to live. It’s like they say, when writing your life story, don’t let someone else hold the pen. I was giving the metaphorical pen to everybody who wanted to hold it.

So, what did I do?? I started writing again, I started reading again, I started workout out again, I mended the relationships I tore apart but it’s still pretty terrible. I still feel pretty awful. I still hate going to school, waking up is still hard, my marks are okay but they are not peaking, I have crippling anxiety.

I am paying the price for neglecting myself. I have crippling anxiety, everything especially studying feels difficult, I have migraines, I have chronic neck and back pain, I have digestive issues, I feel guilty whenever I am not studying and I am always under a lot of stress. Did I mention the crippling anxiety that I have??

I am not content with my life. I am tired of my life and I am constantly daydreaming of a different life and I just wish that the year would end. I feel so done with this year.

I know what you’re thinking… Avuma shouldn’t this be in your journal instead of the internet?? Yeah it probably should but I’m putting this out here because it’s not the end of my story.

Next year when I am done with my matric, my future self who is in university is going to write a response to this post to kind of tell you and my current self how everything panned out.

TO BE CONTINUED…