I was at work waiting for the next customer to come through, when I had a “vision” that I will be 89, still single, somehow still stuck in Wisconsin, have 10 tabby cats, and live in a farm house when Death will come and knock on my door to ask me, nah, tell me, that it’s time to go and I will have done nothing to show that my life was worth living. In a span of 10 minutes, at the age of 22, I had a quarter-life crisis.

What got me thinking about my current situation, or life in general, was a friend telling me that she will be finishing six years in college. Six years and she’s still not done. Granted I am done with college in four years, but it made me realize that college is all that I’ve known; in May, I’ll be leaving the comfort of school life, a life in which I wasn’t a typical college student.

I’m a transfer student, so my last two years here at UW-P has been a long but short and interesting but boring experience. My time in college has flown by so fast that I can’t believe that I’m almost done, but at the same time, I am FINALLY done. I know that this doesn’t make sense to some people, which makes me sound a little strange. But as the saying goes, one door is almost closing causing one to almost open and I’m just not ready. My mom is more excited for me to graduate than I am.

So I started out hyperventilating about one door closing but moved on to how I’m not ready to move on through the other door.. I haven’t fully looked for a job but the anxiety of not finding one is disabling my ability to breathe sometimes. I’m stuck in a rut, with no equipment or upper body strength to get me out.
I don’t know how many of you remember that Drew Barrymore Cinderella movie Ever After, where she is standing at the top of the stairs during the ballroom scene and her line was something like “just breathe.”
Well that’s what I keep telling myself, just breathe Holly, just breathe. It’s not perfectly OK that I have nothing figured out but I’m learning to go with the flow. I’m learning not to have a panic attack when I don’t have the littlest detail figured out and planned for (and no, I’m not obsessive compulsive).

I’m learning let go and to adapt a phrase my mom has used to endure: To live, to laugh and to love. So what if I do live with 10 cats and I am still alone. I have to live my life the way I want to live, I have to laugh at myself and not take everything so personally and love everyone that I come into contact with, no matter how they treat me.

I learn from those people who may not like me or may have pissed me off and it’s part of life. You may not like everyone you come into contact with but you better have some respect for them because they are not perfect, they are not you and they are trying to live life as well.

For all those who are having a quarter-life crisis, just breathe, live long, laugh hard and love everyone.