But Mama, graduate school?

Part of what people don’t tell you about growing up is that…….

IT IS SO MUCH HARDER THAN KEVIN & TERI STOLWORTHY SHOWED ME.

I don’t know how my parents were able to hide the stress, big decisions, quarrels, money issues, anxiety, etc. from my sisters and I but BRA-FRIGGIN-VO because I never knew that’s what they had to deal with until I got much older.

I am finally graduating this semester with my bachelors in Psychology & Sociology.

I know what you’re thinking,

“Emily. You’re a rockstar for getting this done in 7 years. And you’ll totally get a job at McDonalds with a degree in psych.”

Thank you & I know. I am above the average folks that complete it in 4.

But really, I am grateful to be graduating because I put in a whole lot of work and went through a lot of really hard things to get to this point. All I can say is thank you to God, thank you to caffeine and many thanks for Kev and Ter for listening to emotional rants.

Anyways, looking to the future can be super scary and anxiety provoking. For me, it’s like a Tim Burton nightmare; nay, it’s like being stuck in a car with Nicholas Cage. Scary and unnecessary.

I am applying right now to graduate schools all over the place (they are due this week, yay for procrastination and deciding last Wednesday to do this) and my anxiety has sky rocketed with thoughts like this:

“What if I don’t get into any?! What if I have to live with Teri & Kev and work at Costco AGAIN (but I’ll be cooler with a bachelors).”

“I can’t afford graduate school!! Why in the hell did I pick such an altruistic career that will take 20 years to pay off my grad school?!”

“I can’t leave Utah SINGLE. I’LL BE ALONE FOREVER AND EVER BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE WON’T BE ANY MEN WHERE I AM GOING. THEY ONLY LIVE HERE.”

As you can see, they are all very positive. Go me.

I don’t know what really the purpose of this post is, mostly it’s for me to write out what I am feeling.

Yes, I am terrified of change.

Yes, I am EXTREMELY terrified of failure.

Yes, I am scared of rejection.

Yes, I am a human with extreme emotions.

I may even look like this ———–>

BUT, I do have that trusting voice inside me that says, “it will all work out.” Even when I would rather have a blueprint signed by God saying that it will and how, “I know in Whom I have trusted.”

It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to be terrified. I am every single day. But it is our courage that counts, where we stare the vulnerability of rejection/fear/whatever in the face and move forward.

“Pain is unrelenting. It will get our attention. Despite our attempts to drown it in addiction, to physically beat it out of one another, to suffocate it with success and material trappings, or to strangle it with our hate; pain will find a way to make itself known.

Pain will subside only when we acknowledge it and care for it. Addressing it with love and compassion would take only a minuscule percentage of the energy it takes to fight it, but approaching pain head-on is terrifying.

Most of us were not taught how to recognize pain, name it, and be with it. Our families and culture believed that the vulnerability that it takes to acknowledge pain was weakness, so we were taught anger, rage, denial instead. But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.”