It's official.
I hereby declare that I am in the middle of a quarter life crisis. Given that I only recently turned 25, this is based on the fairly unrealistic assumption that I'll live to be 100...
In a few words, a quarter life crisis is that time period in your twenties (between teenage angst and mid life depression) when you stop going with the crowd; when you're stuck between a (mostly) worriless past and a mysterious future. When you try to figure out what and who you really are. When you start feeling old for the first time- although you know that, biologically, nothing could be farther from the truth. When things start to seem without purpose, and when educated self-interest begins replacing college idealism. When you begin to realize- but suddenly dispel the thought from your mind- that not all people are innately good, that everyone is in it for themselves, that the world is hardly a zero sum game. Dog eat dog; be assertive and aggressive; kill or be killed.
Or, for me, the time I first contemplated suicide.
First of all: I KNOW I'm NOT going to do it, because I do value life too much, and I'm (still) an optimist at heart- if I'm feeling down today, there's still tomorrow. I'm too curious, I want to know what life has in store for me- and this alone is, to me, a great reason for living.
But I was scared- scared by my little "what if" game. What would happen if I, by an act of my own will, were to be suddenly removed from the world of the living? Who would miss me- and what's on the other side? (As a scientist by training, I expect nothingness; as a romantic, I hope there's something more...) Do I have to change to be happy? Am I too young to be bitter? Then I tried to dissipate my dark thoughts, but it wasn't easy.
I read somewhere that depression stems from the unability to control your environment. I'd add- that, and from having too many questions unanswered. Answering one springs hundreds of others- ad infinitum. Is the quest of human knowledge hopeless? Is ignorance truly bliss?
I'm lonely.
(downvote away... it's a daylog, for God's sake. it's for venting.)