I feel as though I’m going through my second coming of age as an adult into even more serious adulthood. I’ve been an adult for many years at this point, but have I really? You know? Maybe it’s just the social construct of what we were taught we should be doing or have by this point, but even in my core, I feel as though I have not felt settled in myself in the way that my friends have. They have put pieces of the puzzle together that I accidentally dropped on the floor and am still trying to find.

I am watching all of my friends become different versions of themselves.

My friends that I used to close out the bar with have babies and serious partners now. :,) That’s, like, a serious life-changing thing, actually, haha. We don’t go out every weekend and hit the town because of things like, “I have a big day tomorrow,” or “I have to do chores tomorrow,” or “I don’t have a babysitter.” All of these obstacles that are now in the way of doing what I used to do in my youth are now showing up in bolded Helvetica. These obstacles remind me mostly of what THEY have become. Not necessarily what I have become.

Because they have become who their world needs them to be, I now have to adjust. My Friday nights don’t look like the girls coming over to pregame with tequila shooters and sugar-free Red Bull anymore. They have better things to do now. ← That’s where I get mentally caught.

In my mind, going out and hanging with the girls because we have nothing better to do is all I’ve known. But what do you do when that’s not the life that your friends know anymore and you still feel stuck in that moment?

This isn’t about nightlife, drinking, and partying with the girls. This is about feeling like your friends are outgrowing you.

They have babies, travel they can afford now, partners, and just, like, stuff. We are now at the age where we prioritize “stuff” over tequila shots and closing out our favorite local bar. In the most non-judgmental way possible, I HATE that. Not because it’s a bad thing, but now I’m looking back at all the nights that we did take tequila shots and close out the bar, and I know that we will never be that again.

The part that’s tripping me up, though, is that my friends are who I would usually be doing that with, and they’re not available. I could still do that on my own, as I don’t have a partner, a baby, or a lot of “stuff” that would stop me from doing so. Obviously, besides the torture of what it feels like to be hungover at the young age of 27—woof. Can’t believe I’m even saying that.

The purpose of this article isn’t to bitch about being an adult. It’s to put a focus on the transition from being an adult to becoming a different adult. The young adult Holly who could finally drink and flirt with boys at the bar with all her girls around is, dare I say, in the past? I have the rest of my life to do whatever I want, except for that. And I’m realizing that through my friends becoming unavailable.

Maybe I’ll catch up mentally. I think I slowly am. I’ve incorporated moments like Sunday morning solo brunch (which used to be hungover brunch straight from whatever location we slept at the night before, and maybe with the guests of whose house we slept at), but now I do that alone.

Maybe I’ll feel this nostalgia forever. And that’s okay because I’m not upset, I’m not angry, I’m not regretful, I’m nostalgic. Nostalgic for that life because I know that was the life of Holly that I know, and there’s so much more of the life of Holly that I don’t know.

I value my own life and my experience of my life tremendously. However, I can’t help but feel like my life was meant for something bigger than myself. My life belongs to me, but I also find strength in the fact that I’m not just waking up every day to prove to myself that I can. I could potentially be an example to someone, proving that they can also do it. That allows me to feel liberated to do the things I typically wouldn’t. Almost like an experiment to be shared with my peers.

At first, I started learning about myself for the purpose of simply understanding what the fuck is going on. It’s been a long 27 years of winging it and being constantly confused. lol. Then, I started digging into why I am the way that I am.

I spend time studying behavioral science, neuroscience, spirituality, and even quantum physics. I spend an outrageous amount of time learning about what being human is all about because I want to understand my own experience, but also, now, I can share my experience with others.

I understand that I am just like everyone else. We all have gifts, passions, and personalities. I truly do believe that everyone has something beautiful to offer the world that they belong to—even if just through emergence. Emergence is the idea that individual interactions can affect collective interactions (if you want to get spiritual, we could get into frequency and shit).

If you have had a beautiful conversation that sparked a good feeling in another person, then you have successfully done your duty to better this world.

So, with that being said, I believe everyone has something beautiful to offer to the experience of others. Offering something beautiful to another person will ultimately affect their experience by creating a positive interaction.

But I have this recurring thought in my head that my life doesn’t belong to me.

In a way where I find peace in knowing that even if my situation takes a nosedive, my life is meant to be shared for the benefit of others. Even if I fail, it’s a chance to share my failure as an example for others. It’s okay for them to also fail. And when I find a way through, hopefully they will also have the courage to believe they will find a way through. I have this thought just about every single day.

That HAS to mean something…

I don’t think I’m the hero in this story. I think I’m the reminder, or the experimental guinea pig.

I would like to be the reminder/proof of how valuable it is to watch your own life—to experience your own life. To question why you do what you’ve always done.

Because once you start doing that, you can never stop.

You start unraveling the tightly knit, braided, pre-existing ideas that have been subconsciously ruling your life up until the point of discovering them.

I feel so inspired when I hear someone share information that’s so ordinary but feels like music to my ears. That makes me excited and gets my wheels spinning. We are so eager to connect, and yet we’re so afraid to.

I find myself lacking that fear. Sometimes to a fault… but this isn’t about that.

I am so happy to spill my guts and share everything that others are hesitant to start the conversation around. I find it exhilarating. It almost has this edge of, like, we shouldn’t be talking about this… BUT SAYS WHO. Like, literally, says who.

Writers, creators, storytellers, mothers, fathers, mentors, and ordinary people have the ability to open up a conversation so controversial that others can’t help but respond with, “Oh my God, I’ve never thought about this!” Which probably isn’t true, but maybe they’ve never really verbalized it or found the right situation to be able to organize their thoughts around the idea in question.

I love creating environments where people feel safe to organize their thoughts around a maybe controversial, maybe touchy, not-talked-about situation.

I LOVE being that safe place. And that’s why I believe that my life is not mine.

This love of being an expansive landing pad rather than just a person, friend, or shit, even a TikTok-er, is what makes me believe that my life is not mine.

And honestly, I’m okay with that. Because that’s what brings me so much fulfillment.

I don’t feel the need to fix; I feel the need to introduce. Maybe I’m explaining what a therapist is, but that’s also beside the point.

As a person, not through a career, I have this ability. And after 27 years, I have finally unlocked the name of this ability and have learned to appreciate this about myself.

I can’t shut the fuck up, but I think it’s for good reason, good conversation, and good visibility. I’m an introducer, an includer, a conversation opener, and I would not have it any other way.

My name is Holly Kurtz. I am 27 years old and based in Nashville, Tennessee. I was around 16 or 17 when I was introduced to vaping. My friends pooled their money together and bought a giant refillable vape to share among the group. Initially, I had no desire to start consistently vaping or to purchase a vape of my own until we were introduced to the Juul. With the Juul, vaping became more convenient and somehow made you feel cooler if you owned one. It felt like we’d uncovered a secret, and at the same time, it became an activity that we could do together, as we were too young to do much else. Once I bought myself a Juul, a vape never left my hand.

I vaped whenever I could. In the car. In my room. At a friend’s house. If I didn’t have to hide it, I was hitting it. For 10 years, the first thing I did when I opened my eyes in the morning was hit the vape. The last thing I did before I closed my eyes again was hit the vape. I fell asleep with my vape next to my pillow every night, and in my hand. Unfortunately, I hit that thing as much, if not more, than I breathed clean air.

Because we typically bought fruity or fun-flavored vapes, it made the inhale feel like you were almost enjoying a delicious dessert you might find at a gas station kiosk. But it smelled sweet, tasted like candy, and even made a noise that gave you a thrill when you inhaled. When I first started, I wouldn’t claim that I enjoyed the habit itself. It took a while to get used to. It was annoying how expensive it was to keep up this habit (especially at 17 years old). It was also extremely inconvenient how strategic you had to be to keep this habit from the people you wanted to hide it from. My throat started to hurt constantly. But the more I hit the vape, the more desensitized I became. Eventually, the habit became a comfort, and anytime I thought about quitting, if there was a minor inconvenience, I would head to the local vape shop and get a fresh one to hold as if it were my emotional support blanket.

As far as side effects go, I experienced shallow breathing, occasional chest pain, nausea, appetite suppression, and, unfortunately, significant damage to my teeth and gums. I’m going to have to pay for that (literally $$$). Not to mention the emotional side effects of the shame, embarrassment, and panic when you know it’s about to die or if you forget it at home.

A side effect of vaping that I think might be overlooked is the shame of the addiction when you’re around those who you feel compelled to hide the addiction from. If my young nieces were around, I would have to sneak away to hit the vape. If my vape was visible to them, or even worse, they saw me hit the vape, I would be responsible for corrupting the innocent minds of my own nieces. They would know that their Aunt Holly vapes. The shame from that thought alone caused enough turmoil to not hate the vape itself, but to hate myself for using the vape.

I realized that I was attached to this vape when I was no longer able to just leave it in the car. I was hitting the vape while walking from my car to the location I was headed. I hit the vape in bathroom stalls. I was no longer afraid to hit the vape in public, as long as nobody saw. I also started to feel the intense panic when I would realize that I had accidentally left it at home, or that it had completely run out of juice and there was no way to get to a vape shop before it flatlined. To this day, I find myself still patting my back pocket, where my vape used to sit, just to make sure it’s still there and I didn’t leave it somewhere without realizing. There was always an urgency to replace it as soon as the idea of it not being available even slightly entered my mind.

The turning point for quitting happened while I was struggling with some other health issues, all while a fresh vape was glued to my hand. One day, I imagined myself at an older age with grown children and grandchildren. I had always known the effects of what vaping was doing to my body. But when this thought occurred to me, I imagined myself struggling to get out of a chair and lacking the energy to pick up and play with my future grandchildren. That made me pause while alone in my room (with the vape still in my hand). I was sacrificing Future Holly for Present Holly. But Future Holly felt so far away. I didn’t feel as though I really had to worry about her yet. And the irony was that I was imposing all of this on myself. Once that thought settled in my mind, I was terrified. Quitting vaping had always been on top of my imaginary to-do list—as it is for most people who vape. But once I finally saw myself as Grandmother Holly, it put everything into an alarming perspective.

From that moment on, I started with smaller and, for lack of a better word, “more urgent” habits I was struggling with at the time. Once I had gotten to a place where I was a little more stable, I felt as though it was time for the next step… officially letting go of the vape. Even though one could argue that I should have stopped right in that moment, something told me that I had to address my current life in pieces. Once I had a better organizational system and a plan for turning my life around, I would then be in a stronger place to attack my emotional support vape. I truly do not believe I would have been able to do all of it at once because of the chemical, emotional, and behavioral dependency I had on this silly blue battery-powered air device in my hand. Maybe I’m wrong, but eventually I did stop, and now I have no plan to ever go back. So that’s a win.

I only stopped vaping three weeks ago. I’m still in the beginning stages, but this time it’s different. I no longer see this habit as something that I just do, but as something that conflicts with the person I’m becoming. I want to be an active grandmother who has the health to play with my future grandchildren. I want to go on a run and have the endurance to actually run more than a couple of steps before feeling like my heart is going to explode out of my chest. I officially feel responsible for the future that I am building. My future belongs to me, and the woman I am becoming is not willing to risk struggling to get out of her chair and play with her grandchildren.

It is an incredibly hard habit to kick. I find myself still salivating while thinking about it. It takes over my mind all day, every day. I can’t have a still moment without thinking about the action of hitting my Miami Mint flavored vape. I am incredibly grumpy and hungry all the time. For me, the added bloating and digestive issues that started on day three constantly remind me of how “nice” it was to feel “normal” and not bloated—or, in other words, trying to convince myself that if I just stop at the vape shop after work, all of my problems will go away again.

The main source of comfort from the vape was the idea that it was mine. I, for the most part, had control over what flavor I picked, when I bought a new one, and how often I could hit the vape. I had done it so long that it was no longer a social parasite, but my brain created shortcuts to know that after I take a drink of water or eat a good meal, I hit the vape. It was officially automatic. There was a sense of comfort in knowing that I didn’t have to try hard to do something. I just knew that I was good at it, it felt nice, and it came naturally to me without having to use extra brain power.

Even after three weeks, although I am still experiencing the mood swings, bloating, and eating more than I would have been comfortable with in the past, I am extremely proud of myself. I told myself for so long that eventually I would quit the vape. And this time, I actually did it. I stayed true to myself, and I’m doing this not because of peer pressure or fear, but because I am so dedicated to building a life for myself that I actually want to live. This has created a sense of safety and trust in myself. I know that when I say something, I will actually do it. As far as physical effects, I’m still so early that I can only imagine the positive effects that this will have on my body. One moment that made me feel incredibly proud happened when I was on one of my daily walks outside. I was feeling very aggravated and really felt as though I needed to move some of that buzzing energy out of my body, so I decided to run. After only two weeks, I ran more than I had in my entire life. And I could still breathe! Incredible. I can’t wait to keep feeling proud of myself as I hit new milestones and continue to align myself with the life that I ultimately want; one that doesn’t include a Miami Mint vape.

For the time being, I have allowed myself a cigarette in the evening. I know some will argue that cigarettes are just as bad, but after having a vape in my hand since I was 17 years old, not having that vape in my hand feels like a win. Vapes are so accessible. I cannot smoke cigarettes throughout my day. I cannot smoke a cigarette before I go to work. I cannot smoke a cigarette right before I go to bed. After 10 years of nicotine in my system, my philosophy is to cut the habit first: remove the frequency and accessibility of the action, and then wean off the nicotine when the habit no longer feels automatic.

My message to others is to be kind to yourself. The only thing that got me to stop was being kind to the 60-year-old version of myself. Bullying didn’t work. Embarrassment didn’t work. Social pressure didn’t work. But consciously deciding what kind of life I want to live did. I had to stop thinking only about who I was today and start picturing who I wanted to become, even though she feels so far away from where I am now. I had to care enough about myself to accept the fact that this would be uncomfortable, but ultimately, if I continued, I would be the one to suffer. I’ve decided to quit causing my own suffering.

RIP Miami Mint Lost Mary 7/20/26 </3

After about 7 years I finally unlocked a new found grief that I so desperately needed to feel for an old friend.

My feelings towards this friend were so complex and confusing because, yes, this person had created hurt in my life. But they were never the ultimate source of the pain I was carrying.

I loved this person.

But when I suddenly lost my sense of safety, identity, and purpose, they became the most obvious piece of physical evidence that my old life was gone.

For 7 years, I resented them.

Not because I hated this person, but because this person became a physical representation of a time where my self-concept, my sense of belonging, and my identity had been unexpectedly shattered with a baseball bat. (It unfortunately was that deep).

7 years later, something shifted.

Something finally unlocked.

I realized that I had never truly grieved the friendship that I had with this person.

In order to survive everything else I had lost, my mind had unknowingly sacrificed my ability to grieve the friend I had loved.

The only way I knew how to protect myself was to assign them as the face of an experience that was much bigger than the both of us.

I realize now, I don’t think I was trying to be malicious.

I was making my best attempt at putting a bandaid over the wound and trying not to bleed out. In other words, I was trying to survive.

I was a scared kid.

And now, in retrospect, we were both scared kids trying to make sense of an incredibly confusing interpersonal moral dilemma that completely disrupted our identities.

My brain did something that I wasn’t aware that brains were so good at doing.

It gave my pain a shape.

If I could convince myself that this person was the problem, then my suffering had a name. And when something has a name, you can point to it. You can avoid it. You can protect yourself from ever experiencing it again.

The hurt I was carrying was enormous, abstract, and impossible to hold.

Without realizing it, I turned someone I loved into the outline of my grief.

I’d be lying if I said the resentment didn’t start to fade over the years, but I still wanted to keep the shape of my anger. The shape just went from a solid bold line to a grey-ish dotted line.

There were moments where I thought to myself,

I miss them.

There are memories with this person that remain permanently etched into me.

Beautiful memories that remind me of what innocent joy shared with another person feels like.

What unapologetic silliness feels like.

There were moments where I thought to myself,

I don’t think I could ever have as much fun with anyone else as I did with this person,

Not because we were extraordinary, but because we simply loved each others company.

Until, in my mind, they became the symbol of the death of my old life.

For a long time, remembering glimpses of these beautiful moments wasn’t enough to want the life of that girl back.

At the height of everything, I didn’t want to be that silly girl anymore because I had just learned — in a very big way — that being that silly girl was actually bad. VERY bad.

Who I was 7 years ago, suddenly felt contaminated.

Those beautiful silly moments became tangled together with shame.

But something has finally changed.

For the first time, I can see both of us for what we really were.

Two young people trying to survive a complex, coming-of-age story that neither of us knew how to navigate.

A story of belonging.

About betrayal.

About abandonment.

For years, my heart used to only break for me.

But now my heart breaks for both of us.

Because they are not a representation of what happened to me, they were living through it too.

It’s a bittersweet kind of grief.

Now that my anger has been deluded with empathy, I can feel the weight of what was actually lost.

Not just my old life, but the deep friendship that sank with the ship.

I can finally grieve the fluidity of what we had —how effortless it felt to simply be young together.

I also feel as though I must forgive myself.

For 7 years, I made this person the villain in my story

Not because they necessarily deserved to be one, but because I desperately needed someone to be.

I couldn’t survive the uncertainty of not knowing who I was while carrying the resentment toward myself.

My mind gave grief a face so that it had somewhere to go.

In a strange way this friend became a source of protection — not because they shielded me from what happened, but because my resentment toward them shielded me from emotions that I wasn’t yet capable of carrying.

Now that I no longer need that protection, I can finally grieve them as my friend instead of remembering them as my wound.

If I could summarize what this stage of grief feels like, it would be this:

I am so very sorry.

Not because I believe that I owe you an apology, but because I wish neither of us had to carry what we carried.

I’m sorry that the kids we were had to endure that experience.

Rather than saying that we didn’t deserve it, I would rather believe that, somehow, we became more compassionate because of it,

I’m sorry that we may not ever get to hear each other’s versions of the story.

I’m sorry that we were both unkind to each other in ways frightened people often are.

I’m sorry that it took me so many years to feel this kind of empathy.

I’m sorry that my love took so long to reach this stage of grief.

I do not feel guilty anymore.

My anger no longer needs to be held together in the shape of you.

And after all of these years —

I just miss my silly friend.

I’ve already mentioned that I’ve started posting on TikTok. I wasn’t sure if I was gonna make this public information because being vulnerable is SCARY, ok? But I decided to be so brave and talk about my 10-year addiction to vaping.

It all started in my friend's Jeep in front of the bagel shop with 6 girls packed in, hotboxing in a car that smelled like old bagels and blue raspberry vape juice from the BIG DADDY bright blue vape that was the size of our heads and trending back in, like, 2015–2016. A couple of my friends bought it together, so when we were in high school with nothing better to do, we would sit in the car and puff, puff, pass it LOL. I indulged here and there, but it wasn't my thing… until I bought a Juul. That was the beginning of my 10-year nicotine exploration journey.

Once I bought it, it was game over for me. It went from Juul (mint pods specifically), to cigarettes when I moved to Australia in 2020 and they didn’t have vapes like the US did, to Puff Bar (Cocomelon, obviously), to Flum (I liked the cranberry flavor for some reason?), to Elf Bar (Miami Mint), to Lost Mary (Miami Mint). Over the last 10 years, i’ve actually started associating each vape with a different era of my life. Though I never identified as a smoker, I was a smoker from age 17 to 27. It sneaks up on you. It’s a social parasite that slowly becomes something in your hand, purse, or pocket at all times.

When I decided to quit, I decided to talk about how I came to the idea of actually quitting for real, for real. I was struggling with other identity and health issues and realized that if I keep doing what I'm doing, I will not have the health to play with my future grandchildren. And I would really like to do that. Once I was able to see myself in the future and actually consider that I will be of mature age with a life that looks different than what it does now, I realized everything I’m doing now will affect HER. Future Grandma Holly. That's when shit got real.

Once I visualized this habit of hitting my vape as if it were a muscle that I was working out and strengthening—the idea that if you don't use it, you lose it—the idea of not strengthening that muscle anymore felt less daunting. Not taking the fear away completely, but lessening the burden of “quitting” and instead using the visual of simply exercising another muscle—literally anything but putting a sweet-flavored battery to my mouth and inhaling. :/

I posted one video to test the water, and got TREMENDOUS engagement. People showed up. Encouragement, storytelling from strangers, and tips that they have learned to also overcome this same problem. What was so crazy to me was that there were little to no hate comments. People were literally just showing up for people. My favorite thing about that post is that in my comment section, it's not just encouragement aimed toward me; there are hundreds of comment threads of people encouraging people. WE ALL LOWKEY DO THE SAME SHIT. I realized that by opening the conversation and being curious about why I have this nasty habit that I innocently picked up in my teens, it gave others the opportunity to speak up and be curious about themselves, and I find that absolutely fucking beautiful.

Fast forward, I've posted 2 more posts about my experience, and EVEN MORE PEOPLE showed up. After 3 days, here are the stats: 651k views, 59k likes, 8.7k saves, 1k comments, and 3k shares. I cannot get over all of the stories of how many people picked up this same habit at 14, 17, 20 years old, etc., and after anywhere from 3 months to 24 years have decided that they want to create a better life for themselves.

It’s so easy to care about how you'll be perceived, and there's always the threat of, "Be careful what you put on the internet," but I also believe that if this conversation has at least an ounce of an impact on the 651k (and counting) people who viewed this post, fuck perception. Fuck online appearance. This is real shit. It's not good shit, but it's real shit.

The conversation is switching from "run to TikTok Shop for a product that you don't fucking need" to "I've decided that I've had enough and I want a better life." Somewhere down the line, I think we lost the plot. We stopped showing up authentically. The amount of strangers who were so willing to show up and either admit that they've been feeling the same way that I do, or share that they have at one point felt the way that I do and show encouragement as a friend who made it across the finish line.

I tend to find comfort in knowing that I'm not an evil, disgusting, disgraceful person with a terrible habit that no one else would dare to have. I guess maybe that's the point of AA? Idk. Either way… We have engagement apps like TikTok to engage and be social, and sure, TikTok can also be a place to dissociate and look at silly content, but I think we've dissociated so far that we're all on our own planets far, far away. I find extreme comfort and motivation in knowing that everyone lowkey does the same shit.

You know when you envision your future life and maybe, for some, you see yourself doing/being something really specific? For me, it’s not specific. I see a kitchen with a green backsplash, and I have a husband. Other than that scene, I don’t have any other insight on what the fuck I could possibly be up to. I know that I’m probably doing something or involved in something cool af that I’m really loving, but I just don’t know what that is.

So when I have this thought, future me is usually in a better place than I am now. More successful, more money, a partner, over that situation that’s been stressing me tf out, looking better than I look now. You know what I’m talking about, right?

I started posting on TikTok. I know... but hear me out. My motive for posting is nothing more than to do what I do here. Talk about why the fuck it’s so annoying putting lotion on, etc. I obviously talk about more than lotion, but the science behind why putting lotion on is so psychologically hard is fascinating. That’s just an example that everyone can relate to.

The more I posted, the more people related to me. The more people relate to me, the more willing I become to open up about things that we don’t usually openly talk about. And it turns out, more people than you think have experienced the things we don’t often feel urged to share out-loud.

I lean very heavy on neuroscience. I do my own research. Whatever concept we’re conversing about is something that I have experienced or noticed and thought to myself, “Why?”I discuss the science behind why we, as human beings, do what we do, at even the smallest, most relatable scale (i.e., lotion). We’re interesting. Like, really interesting. Humans are fucking fascinating. And so complex??? There’s so much to learn about us and about this really mind-boggling concept called life.

Something that I found really shocking was that I don’t receive a lot of hate on my TikToks. And I KNOW how this sounds... but I can genuinely say that when I (or anyone else) shares an authentic experience or thought, other people are typically more eager to listen and RELATE. So I’m hearing all of this encouragement via comments and DMs. I have strangers, who don’t personally know me, sharing with me how my content is helping them grow and motivating them to build a better life for themselves.

So now, I’m learning, and posting, and sharing, and I’m gaining understanding and visibility of myself. Developing a self-concept. Verbally organizing my consciousness and seeing my own visual image on screen. And on the followers’ side, it’s growing. 19k+ in less than 3 weeks. All of these 19k people validating my self-exploration and telling me that they think maybe it was God that brought my post to their FYP.

I can’t help but think to myself that this may not be a crazy coincidence. Because when I visualize future me, with my mind’s eye, future me is doing something cooler than I am now. So I have this sense of pride and gratitude because I do have physical evidence that I did build this, and also imposter syndrome because I will never be future Holly. I have begun to understand that that is an impossible goal that I will never reach. I will only ever be present Holly. And as my life continues, I will age in the present (with grace btw).

So now that I’ve been moving along this journey of curiosity and self-discovery, what if the compliments and support are manifestations of my thoughts? What if I’m being rewarded for learning and caring about me, and it’s being reflected back because now I have a better understanding of my experience and about how I should be cared for?

The more good I seek, the more good I find. Everything I do comes from a place of wanting to have the best possible experience I can in this body that I will only be in temporarily. I think the more I sought after that, the more I was able to see it. Life is shit sometimes, but I know future me is gonna somehow have a better life. You know what I mean?

lol

I heard this phrase on Astrologytok, and according to the internet, people tend to stop thinking about a TikTok in a matter of seconds after scrolling by. However, this stayed in my head and gave my tummy a funny, nervous feeling.

Only a few nights ago, I learned about the laws of polarity, rhythm, and contrast. I noticed that the more I dove into these fascinating scientific and philosophical concepts, the less I wanted to scroll. And that is in fact a slay.

My philosophical understanding of polarity is that, in order to feel great happiness, you must have, at some point, experienced great sadness. Otherwise, the contrast between the two becomes more neutral, and the line can potentially become dull or blurred. One might be considered a high and one maybe a low, but I think life becomes more wonderful (wonder-FULL) when you get to experience something in its fullness. Even if the lows are low, oh boy, are the highs high. They are opposites on the spectrum, but they require one another for the existence of the other. Crazy.

Thinking in the context of human emotions, a gift would be maybe awe, joy, or peace. What are the opposites? Dullness, stress, and chaos. In order to experience those positive emotions, you must have felt the opposite at some point or another.

Now, two things can be true at once. You can feel awe, and you can feel dullness all in the same day. You can feel peace, and you can feel chaos. You do not always get to pick, and you do not have to always choose to identify with only one end of the spectrum. Sure, there are always preferred options, but the matter is, you have to find a way to appreciate both experiences, as one would be minimized without the other.

I feel as though, to avoid the sharpness of the contrast of polarity, you must embrace both ends. That way, the time in-between of the two states isn’t so disruptive. Going from sad to happy feels like a million years, and for that whole million years, there is a painful ache in your bones, praying that future you comes sooner rather than later. This is when I start to feel resentful of my present day life. Going from happy to sad feels like the entire world has, all of a sudden, taken away your gift, and you were only given a glimpse of what the bright future has in store for you. It’s just not yours yet.. if ever.

To smooth the transition, I would imagine understanding the laws of rhythm, detachment, attraction, and a general understanding of human behavior and consciousness would help. Lol.

The world is rotating in a cycle. Our days are structured in a 24-hour cycle. The weather cycles through seasons. Even fashion comes and goes in a cycle. Imagine your human emotions work in a cycle. Sometimes you are sad, sometimes you’re happy, but know that when you are sad, eventually, one day, you will be happy again. When you are happy, know that you will inevitably be sad again.

But the key thing here is that it will always come back around. So appreciate the fact that you will not be sad forever, and acknowledge that you will not feel happy forever. The bridge between the two is where you get to decide what your experience will be and how you choose to prepare for the next part of your cycle.

I was driving to work one morning, listening to the audiobook Man’s Search for Meaning, and even though I was listening to horrific stories about the literal Holocaust, my thoughts rang louder than the narrator's voice, and I thought to myself, “Is this life that I have all I have to look forward to? Because I am literally fucking miserable.”

Obviously, there was guilt attached to that statement because I’m in my car, I have a bi-weekly income, I ate a McMuffin that morning, and yet I was literally resenting the chosen life that I built for myself. Ever since I had that thought, I became fascinated with why I do what I do.

Why do I stay in relationships that I know aren’t right, and I’m too weak to leave? Why do I stay in the job that I know is putting my nervous system in survival mode, and the thought of leaving to do something else is far too much to bear? Why do I feel the need to binge-shop to the point where I avoid looking at my bank account and pray that I didn’t spend as much as I think I did? Why do I feel so miserable when, on paper, I live a great and objectively privileged life?

Ever since that morning when I had that thought in my car, with a $1 McDonald’s coffee in my hand, (I can imagine this scene so vividly) I became obsessed with learning about me.

Sure, I thought about those questions often, but I never actually ASKED the question: “Why do I…?” I call that consciousness: the ability to take those thoughts that you have (that are inner vibe markers) and explore them to the point where you’ve cleared out all of the confusion, and can take aligned intentional action. I call that last part, alignment.

I can’t wait to share with you what I have found. And it turns out, the more questions you ask, the more control you realize that you have. One question like “Why didn’t I ever care enough to put lotion every night on until now?” can turn into an existential expedition of the meaning of life. Fun right? Life is a series of senses, predictions, assumptions, and experiences that only you are able to experience in your own mind. Until you understand why you experience life the way that you do, your life is being controlled by everything that has ever happened at, to, and around you. And I think people should talk about this more.

So let’s fucking learn about being human.