What if

When you mentally make a decision; have you ever wondered how it made you feel, or even regretted the decision for no reason?

When I was a young my parents always instilled how important it was to be confident, in everything you did. They were both in business and it was vital for their jobs that they were very confident and respected people. Now for me I grew up that way, and I assumed everyone grew up with that upbringing. It had nothing to do with arrogance, it was the simple fact that I was a child and did not understand that everyone grows up differently.

I was in Middle school and starting to make lots of friends, really starting to find my pre-teenage self. I noticed my girlfriends would sometimes get anxiety; I was not super familiar with what that was, nor why it would affect them so much all the time. I remember one day my sister got an anxiety attack and I didn't know what to do, it passed by itself but my parents had a talk with both of us. They explained that sometimes when people get stressed out too much or feel peer pressured it can lead to anxiety, also known as stressors. The fear of not knowing can make people scared, anxious, depressed, or even suicidal. I remember my parents explaining all of this to me as if I were in school, the talk lasted a long time as we were also asking a lot of questions. At the end of our long conversation my parents reminded us of something very important, everyone can get anxiety, depression, scared, etc.. That however DOES NOT make you different, ill, useless, or weak.

The older I got the real world started to set in, I didn't know where life would take me after graduation. The fear became real and scary, and I started to feel unmotivated. I was experiencing my own personal fear and I was making it everyone else's problem, I was not dealing with it very well. I think something that is so overlooked sometimes is the fact that mental health is so overlooked when we are teenagers, and it builds over the years. When I got my own apartment, I felt so alone and so scared. I thought no one understood how I felt and no one cared, I mean why would they. From my teenage life taught me a lot; one of which was that if I let myself be alone for too long I became a dangerous hermit, with that being said I pushed myself to be normal and started self healing. Not everyone has this much mental strength, but I got that strength after falling so many times as a teen and having others help me pick up the pieces.

Growing up I realized my teenage life was pretty 'normal' in the sense of what went through, as in, I was not alone. young adults go through roughly the same things; we stress about grades, relationships, jobs, money, driving, friends, appearance, and overall life. If I had been told from the beginning that everyone around my life would be overthinking life myself, I would have acted so differently as a kid and reached out more. We as young adults get so intimidated thinking that we are the only ones going through hard times or even big decisions. What we should learn as young impressionable minds is; hey your going to struggle and your going to fail, but it will mold you into a stronger person in the end. Also your not the only one going through this, everyone else is too, in their own kind of way. We need to teach the next generation acceptance, instead of isolation and telling them they are different.

What if you had made a different decision all those years ago? does the fear of not knowing keep you up at nigh? it shouldn't, cause your exactly where your supposed to be.