there was a young girl who was full of light and excitement and happiness, curious about the world, a pocket full of dreams, and constantly asking questions. she wanted to be a ballerina, the president, a teacher, and like barbie, her career path changed with every idea she had or every fleeting interest that came up. everyone told her she would do great things, amount to something big, that her brain was full of ideas that could change the world, and that her imagination was powerful enough to get her wherever she wanted to be. she lived in that world, sarahtopia, for so long that lines between her sparkly pink perfect world and the real world began to blend.
inside, sarahtopia was meant to be perfect. there it’s easy to pretend problems are tiny, like you can just get swept up by life's greater pleasures, but it’s an unattainable lifestyle. i love sarahtopia, existing in my own little world, telling myself that i can be anything i want to be, but it’s not real life.
real life is 20 job applications every day, and rejection emails coming all the time. it’s living 4 hours away from your best friends and boyfriend and constantly missing them. real life is spending a ridiculous amount of time alone, struggling to sleep because anxiety plagues every waking moment. it’s a lot of tears and confusion and hurt, with the occasional breath of fresh air, but it usually just feels like stale, recycled air.
i’ve talked about this before, but i’ve become so cynical recently. i know it’s been brought on by the lack of direction and overall confusion my life seems to be filled with right now, but it still feels out of character for me. i’ve wondered a lot if this cynicism is rooted deeper than just me feeling like an overall disappointment in my life and comes more from the confidence and excitement i had when i was younger slowly being shattered by the weight of the real world. maybe i was filled with too many dreams and big ideas as a child or told too often how special and gifted i was, perhaps i had too big an opinion of myself, but now i feel like i’m waiting for Something Big to happen in my life and i’m slowly accepting the fact that i’m not meant for that. it makes sense, the girl who wanted to be president of the united states just to paint the white house pink had outlandish dreams, but now, less than a month away from 23 (objectively still very young) i’m asking myself over and over, what my life is supposed to look like.
life isn’t pretty. it’s not pink or sparkly or constantly exciting. life is gross and hard and often feels like it’s punching you over and over (mostly while you’re already down) but there are days when the sun is shining, and things are going perfectly, where sarahtopia makes a small return, but most of the bad days seem to outweigh the good.
i’ve made all of the choices in my life to get where i am today (sitting in a cafe listening to nell mescal’s EP while writing this) and i try so hard not to regret anything, but sometimes it’s inevitable to sit and spiral backwards. i’ll be recounting how one dumb idea led to another and then it will hit me that i’m back in my hometown with almost no idea where i could go from here. i would go through moments in college where i would be so homesick, i would miss my family, driving around in my car with the windows down, the small little places i used to go to, but now i feel the same nostalgia about college. i miss seeing my best friends every day, the routine of going to class and learning, wandering around the city, and laughing about something so trivial.
i feel like an actor playing me in a sad dramatization of my own life. this is a reverse coming-of-age movie, or maybe the sad example of a post-coming-of-age movie, where the protagonist makes it out of her small town, is so happy and feels like life is perfect and exciting but then she ends up back in the same place that she hated to begin with. it feels like some twisted punishment, a cosmic wrongdoing. i know what i want and this isn’t it, and regardless of how hard i try to escape the situation and put myself back in the life that used to be my reality. every day i just feel more and more stuck in what could only be described as some kind of purgatory.
i want to move out of this chapter of my life, this scene that feels like it’s been going on for ages, where the strange actor-sarah that seems to have taken over my life can’t pull herself together so i’m screaming at her to stop, figure it out, take the path that makes the most sense, but in reality, there isn’t one directly in sight right now.
i think to get where i need to be, it’s a very complicated path, in the middle of dark woods with trees that block out most of the sun and a path that is so twisted and winding it often feels like it’s going around and around in circles. maybe i passed that tree before while trying to get out, and maybe the jump over the stream is so wide i need to walk along the water for a while until i can find a safer, more reasonable way to cross it. this path is so far from perfect and straightforward i want to crumple at the base of a tree and wait for someone to show me the way out of the woods, but there’s a stronger part of me that wants to keep pushing forward, even though it hurts, thorn bushes pulling at my clothes, rocks slipping under my feet, trying to get me to stop.
there’s a different version of me that still longs to go down all of the different paths i used to want to take, all of the different forks in the road. what if i never quit ballet, would i be a ballet dancer right now (probably not), maybe if i never switched my major from political science to journalism in the second week of college i would be on track to be president (definitely not), but i also wonder things like what if i never took jobs that made me unhappy, or how would my life look if i prioritized other things i was interested in. i think the point is i’m always going to wonder “what if” and there’s a lot of “what if’s” in life. the woods are full of endless paths, all leading to a different future, but no matter what, i would still have to travel through the same woods to get there. yes, the path could be shorter, or more direct, but i know now that life is not just snapping your fingers and getting things done. as much as i dislike hiking, i have to pull on those horrendous boots and figure out my path.
the sarahtopia version of life for me right now would be something like just being a writer. i know it’s what makes me happiest, it lets me take out as many of my feelings as i need to, and i know i’m able to use my voice for good things. i want that life so badly, writing about my life and others’ lives, and what is important in the world, but i know i can’t just snap my fingers and make it happen. i guess that’s why i love this little community on substack so much. it’s become a new, more actualized version of sarahtopia for me, this is the beautiful meadow i found while stumbling through the woods. it’s a place where maybe instead of dreaming about what i can be when i grow up, i dream of what i want to write about and then i do it. this is the closest i can get to being that little girl again, letting life take me wherever it wants to, imagining grand, romantic futures for myself, but it’s more mature now. it’s more anchored in reality. i know i can’t be everything i’ve ever wanted to be, and i can’t wait for something Big and Special to happen for me. i think i overlooked it, but maybe this is my something special.
here’s to finding something special together
with love,
sarah <3
ps: here are some things i’ve been loving lately
my library card!!!
nell mescal’s EP Can I Miss It For A Minute?
striped boxer shorts (perfect for summer)
driving with the windows open so i can smell the cut grass
pasta with lemon and peas (very light, very tasty)
A few things to say, hopefully one or more is helpful:
1. Something I've started to impress on myself recently as a young person living alone is that you need to take absolutely any opportunity to socialize with people in order to keep feeling like a human animal. There are so many problems that feel so pressing when you're trapped in the home of your mind that dissolve when you're a little better socialized.
2. It can be very helpful to talk to, or at least hear interviews from, people who have the career positions you want. (If it's hard to think of such people, your career idea needs better specification). One thing that quickly becomes obvious is that they often take a pretty meandering road to get there. Often the road to the best career moments is really about putting yourself in the vicinity of the right opportunities and taking then as they come.
3. It's might sound trite, but you are actually very brave for a) putting your writing like this out there and b) putting our 20 job applications a day. I have a job, but when I was searching I never put out so many job apps at once. Getting that many rejections is equally as hard. I'm not saying it's easy for you, of course, but be proud you're doing it.
4. This blog reminded me a lot of this piece, about how one can be happiest in the ruins of the expectations one once had for themselves: https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/playing-in-the-ruins