Last summer, in 2019, I had just started working my first full-time job I have ever had since I had just graduated from college. Although it was a temporary position that I didn’t plan on staying too long at, I still wanted to impress those around me. I wanted to do what they asked as well as I could and move up as fast as I could into a permanent position. After not too long there, I started having anxiety attack moments that lead to crying fits.
One night during work, in the last part of the day, I fell apart. I started crying, which is unusual for me, and couldn’t control my emotions at all. Even though I got through the shift without anyone at work noticing, I still was shaking and panicked the rest of the shift. I talked with my partner through text asking if they could drive me around and help me to calm down because I was freaking out and couldn’t figure out how else to stop it.
Once work ended, I got in the car and started to talk about how I was feeling. I was having an existential crisis, of sorts, at 22 years old. I had panicked about the new fear I had of knowing that I was going to pass someday and I wanted to do everything I could in that lifetime. I was scared of working a dead-end job that I hated and getting to the end of my life and hating myself for not doing what I wanted. I didn’t even know what I wanted with my life yet, and I still don’t. I started crying in the car because I had no idea how to control the emotions that suddenly hit me like a train that night.
I have attempted to describe those emotions of breaking down out of no where to people, but the best description I have is this – A tsunami forming from a ton of small waves over a period of months leading up to graduation.
