AM I LIVING A LIE? A QUARTER-LIFE CRISIS

People around me who studied with me, played with me, are getting jobs and will start earning soon, and here I am making notes and still trying to find out what I want to be. Well, one can say it's what I chose for myself, so I should be aware that studying something like literature takes a lot of time. At the end of the day, it was I who wanted to follow my dreams, wanted to be surrounded by books. Here you go...

I wanted to go for literature, didn’t I?

There is always this feeling of imposter syndrome, where I feel that I am not really interested in literature. I'm just trying hard to feel smart, philosophical, and poetic. It's like I'm trying to be what I'm not.

Why do I feel that? Well, because I never thought I was going to study literature. One day in 2023, I thought, let's read this internet sensation book, and then I started reading back-to-back. After six months, I told my parents I was going to study English, and I don't feel like I'm justifying anything I'm doing because I'm literally not good at anything. I can't write rhythmic poetry, I have never written a story, and I can't even do proper criticism of any text.

If not LITERATURE, I don't even know what I would have been doing. Then I think I chose literature for passion or just because it was easy for me to remember and throw it out on an answer sheet.

A few questions that often come to my mind as a literature student are: why literature? Why are you studying it? If you like reading books, you can do that in your free time. Do you really need a degree for a hobby? What am I going to do next? PhD? Do you really want to do that, or do you just want to escape the problem of searching for a job...?

Huhhhhhhh... it's hard to function when these types of questions linger in my mind. Throughout my life, I tried hard to be one of those abstract-thinking, solitude-loving, ghazal-listening, and shayari-reading girls. But now I realise that I'm not that person. I cannot listen to ghazals. I do not have the patience for it. I don't understand Urdu to appreciate shayari. I don't even like reading poetry, and here I am calling myself a literature lover.

One thing that comes to my mind with these thoughts is that maybe I think all this because I subconsciously feel that literature is an inferior subject in comparison to maths and science. What I'm studying is something that anyone can do. That's what people told me over and over. "You should not spend your whole time reading. You can study a week before exams and pass."

Then I feel, but I read 59 books last year, and not everyone can. Not everyone did. A lot of people didn't even finish the syllabus. But then again, I feel, you read all those books because you wanted to read them, or because you wanted to finish the syllabus and feel superior. But then I read 30 books before starting my master’s in August... These condescending thoughts can definitely be a good piece of existential literature.

It's really hard to own this up. I realised this a few months ago, but now writing it out is even harder. Why? I don't know how I am supposed to compose it in this blog entry, which is just like a diary entry. I do not have to make it very beautiful and literary to appeal to someone. I mean, I can literally use the simplest words to describe my feelings, but I have none. (Proceeds to write 1000 word blog......) 

Every day feels like a burden, which I'm carrying through the books I read. I love reading because it helps me stop thinking. It's like alcohol—while reading, I'm too busy to think about anything else. After reading, I only think about characters and stories. It gives me a good escape from my own thoughts. I can run away because I'm too scared to sit with myself.

I don't want to stop reading, but I also want to understand what I'm feeling. I don't know why I always feel that one day I will stop reading and will never be able to get back into it, but why I'm scared of this thought, maybe I will have something else to be happy with, I wanted to read my thoughts and speak them to you through this blog.

If you made it till now, I know you are bored, so here is cat pic, for some stimulation for you, (this picture is from me, and to whoever own this, I don't consider you real person, I mean how people on the pinterest can be real, but still ik you exist and shout out to you, keep posting).

Am I really suffering from a quarter-life crisis? Because the Google definition of it definitely describes me. Or maybe this is what they call overthinking. You know what? I know what the problem is—I just talk too much to myself. And now I've made two angels—the good one and the bad one—and they both fight.

Why can't life be La La Land? Why can’t I just marry Jungkook and be happy?

Well, I know reading this blog is very difficult because I completed this in ten days, and my feelings are definitely different now. Yesterday, I completed my first semester exams, and now I'm feeling light, so I cannot bring the same emotions. But again, bitch, why the fuck do you need coherent emotions if this blog it it's just like a fucking diary entry...?

So basically, I wrote most of it before exams, and now I completed it today, the day I'm going to post it. And then I kinda edited it and put some paragraphs here and there. So if you feel a rollercoaster of emotions, just pardon me. Pardon. That's the fanciest word I used in the whole blog. Whenever I see this word, I always repeat it in a British accent. Am I the only one who does that?

And why did I ghost y'all for six months? Well, I'm gonna tell you that in the next blog 😈.