I had the worst possible weekend.
For a myriad of reasons, the universe just decided that now was a wonderful time to take a huge dump on my face. It was so bad that I drove to Columbus, sobbing to American Football the entire way up Route 33 (no shame), just to see my mom for a few hours and be reassured that I was, in fact, acting like a 2-year-old, that it was OK to act like a 2-year-old for a brief period of time, but that, sometime in the near future, I needed to pull myself together.
With the prospect of writing this column looming ominously, I lied in bed with the covers pulled over my head and was so close to emailing my editor and telling him I was taking the week off. How in the name of God was I supposed to talk about something so frivolous as being HAPPY when I was at my wits’ end with absolutely everything?
Here’s the answer, friends: you just do it. You grow a pair. You drag yourself out of that bed, dry those little eyes, and move on with your life.
Sometimes things get a little overwhelming. I could fill up 17 pages of a Word document with everything school-related I have left to do before this semester’s over (but by the way we are so close, guys) and 17 more about why I should be able to just blow it all off.
Yeah, lovely, that’s all well and good, but sometimes you don’t really have a choice as to whether or not you want to deal with something. You just ... have to.
You’re allowed to have a mental breakdown day. Hell, maybe even two or three. But eventually you need to allow yourself to ease back into reality.
Sort through your problems. Figure out why they’re bothering you so much and what you can do to get ‘em out. My friend Jake — bless his heart — sat down with my red-eyed and anxiety-ridden self the other day and wrote out every single thing I was worried about and what percentage each was occupying in my mind. We came up with solutions for what we could.
But for what we couldn’t? I just had to come to terms with it. Albeit begrudgingly.
Acceptance is like that weird aunt that you have to see once a year at your family Christmas party. You absolutely dread the moment when you have to interact with her, put it off until the last possible minute, and yeah, the awkward conversation and forced cheer suck at the time, but it’s just kind of something that you have to suck up and do, and once it’s over, it’s over, and you wonder why you even got so worked up about it in the first place.
That quite possibly may have been the worst analogy ever conceived, but seriously: acceptance is your friend. Sometimes your circumstances are utterly unchangeable. I’m not gonna recite that Bible verse at you about the serenity to accept what you can’t change that every white girl has in her Facebook quotes section, but you know what I’m talking about.
Cry. Go for a run. Talk to your friends. Drink. Smoke. Don’t get out of bed for a day. Do whatever you need to do, then slap a smile on your face, come to terms with your problems and get over it. You can do it, I promise.
There are too many good things going on around you to get caught up in every menial thing that goes wrong in your life. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
Cortni Dietz is a sophomore studying journalism at Ohio University and a columnist for The Post. Tell her what makes you happy at cd509910@ohiou.edu.
