Adrenaline Addict

I love going on a random streak of journaling and then going AWOL for like months at a time. This time around went on a "post-grad" trip with friends to Japan and Korea, then kinda crumped when I got back. There was so much going on and I got overwhelmed. It has gotten better now, but still plenty to deal with.

I would like to keep asking myself: "Where did it all go wrong?" To be fair, it was never a single instance, but it is a question I pretty much know the answer too. I find myself ignoring it and the longer I do so, the worse everything gets.

As much as I would like to continue reflecting and word vomit all my thoughts out here, it is late and I need to get back to work. However, to keep it short for now, I have not been really in tune with human emotions in general and that has gotten me so numb that I started feeling like a husk of myself. Granted that was many more years ago and I felt that I have started recovering in a way, but there obviously have been the ups and downs.

This excerpt from this tiny, yet impactful book has hit me the hardest, probably because I relate to it the most. The percentages were referring to CDC's survey of how many teens considered suicide/how many actually attempted it. Granted by the time I was considering it, I was far beyond my teenage years, but the fundamental reason was still the same because I kept asking myself: "What is the point of living?"

When I had those thoughts, I was still a practicing Catholic but starting to have one foot out the door. Not sure I could remember the reason why, but maybe something along the lines of, "What am I even doing this for?" or really "I can do it myself without having to go to church."

Unbeknownst to me, as I was leaving, all meaning and purpose slowly fell apart. I was just going through the motions of graduating undergrad, finding a job, looking to move up career-wise to have stability in my life. That last part is what I hung all my hopes on, even as I moved into pharmacy school and what I thought I was gonna end up doing with my life. However, assigning that meaning soon fell apart when my moral compass did not have direction. A compass that does not have a North/South Pole assigned to it will just spin infinitely.

My behavior afterwards was simply doing what felt "right" to me and if other people had something to say, I usually had some kind of justification or simply just thought "they don't understand." Actually that is where it all went wrong. I remember discussing that thoughts/actions are not inherently right or wrong, but more so the justification that comes along with it, and as such, the justification is what evil constitutes. Even now as I write it out, it is no different than the Original Sin that Adam and Eve committed. In itself, eating the fruit was considered wrong, but it was the shift in blame and trying to play God by justifying the action that led to humankind's downfall.

My justification to shape a world where I was the one dictating it to always be in the "right" was my flaw and the cause for my demise. Whether it was speeding on the highway or binge drinking, I always found an excuse to justify my actions, which ultimately kept me going on this spiral. Because I wanted to maintain this control, I started pushing people away as well. I did not want to hear their concern because I believed they would not understand or would ruin my outlook. It was also why I procrastinated because it was perfect or bust, so I never opted to take the path filled with mistakes. I needed it shaped to what my vision was.

Moved back home from a year of rotations in Sacramento and honestly I thought I would just graduate to move into the next chapter of my life, but seems like the consequences of my actions has caught up to me.

For a start, I procrastinated on a project that is a graduation requirement and as such, I did not complete it. This requires me to enroll for a summer quarter, which delays my ability to get licensed and find a job. If anything it is also embarrassing because I will have to speak with my mom about funding another quarter's worth of tuition.

Next, my inability to follow up with certain tasks resulted in a registration mix-up so that I cannot take the practice license exam. Granted that I have my licensure process delayed anyways and it was a free practice, it does not matter much, BUT it is the principle of me not actually completing tasks properly.

This brings me to the book I am reading now which I happened to find while sorting through old items at home. It is called Absolute Relativism by Chris Stefanick. It goes over what it is, the underlying thought process, and how this philosophy has worked its way into many people's lives to become so intertwined in society. Unfortunately, I have also been a proponent of this philosophy, which has resulted in many issues in my life over the last couple of years.

Like I had mentioned in a previous post, I was always more like "Why not?" rather than taking a stance. I became very passive and standing by to watch that as long as it was not harming anybody, I let it pass. This may have worked for some bits, but as everything resides on the same strand of life, nothing can go untouched. I soon realized this passivity made it so that I never actually got anything done. I was a mere spectator.