Azul

I caught myself up at 4am last night for the third consecutive night in a row. I would like to say that there were circumstances that required me to be awake but alas my brain was racing away thinking about this past year. It amazes me how I could manage to work three jobs with only 5 hours of sleep. Yet here I am, finally able to type away this lingering thought I have had since last night: If you could go back in time, what would you say to your past self?

This thought comes from a conversation I had with a new acquaintance. We spent hours discussing old Twilight Zone episodes, the future of filmmaking, and I attempted to challenge his thinking with some large philosophical questions… The reality of this conversation was that I wasn’t ready to go to bed and this person is so easy to talk to that I feel like if we didn’t have clear set boundaries then we would never get sleep. He is just one of many people I met this year that have made my year a little better. Honestly, my new set of long distance friends are the single shining light in this awful COVID filled year.

So, here we are.

If you told me 4 months ago that I would be trying to juggle 3 jobs, attempting to schedule in time to see my friends, my acne would clear up fully, and that I would still be happily single, I would have laughed in your face. September was a drastically dark period of my 2020. I hit rock bottom. I was cripplingly depressed. I was terrified of the future of the country. I told my friends that I felt like I had no direction in life. I was casually rolling my eyes at my friends who were telling me to “cheer up” and “see the bright side”. I felt like I had lost all hope…

Then one day, I caught myself thinking about summer of 2019. Therapy had just ran in Long Island City and I was looking forward towards my next piece According to This… a collaborative piece about the struggles of growing up. In that show, I spent my nights in stage reading two pages out of my diary. It was a letter from my younger self to my future self. I discussed the scary transition from high school to college and wrote a long list of advice for when life seemed to get challenging. I immediately went scrambling through my journals looking for that journal entry. I tore my room apart trying to see if I could find the script to the show. Then right as I was about to give up, my journal fell from my desk opening up to the letter that I was so desperately looking for.
I sat on the floor of my room with tears falling down my face. Everything was different now. How do you live in a world with such uncertainty?

You keep going.

Those were the words of advice I was desperately looking for in this journal. “Lauren, the world may flip upside down one day but you must keep going.”

Something I have been doing during this pandemic to stay sane is to read marketing book, self-help books, money management books, business books, anything to keep myself from staying trapped within this world of uncertainty. All I knew is that if I kept working then I would know that something would happen. It could have been good, it could have been bad but all I knew was that I did not want to stay in that desolate place. If I stayed in that state of depression, I wouldn’t have been able to grow into a more self-sufficient person. I would have stunted my growth.

So, if I would go back in time and could tell my past self one thing, it wouldn’t be lotto numbers.

I would tell her to keep going.

2020 gave me the worst job experience of my life. I had to biggest heartbreak that I have had to date. My cat died. The world fell apart. I was separated from my brother for 9 months because of a virus that could, at any moment, kill him because he was a frontline worker. My face was in extreme pain for 6 months because of my acne. The list could go on and on.

Yet, if I didn’t experience all those things, I wouldn’t be the artist I am today. I wouldn’t have gotten to this chapter of my life. I wouldn’t have known all the wonderful nuggets of wisdom that I do now. I wouldn’t have met the people who I talk to almost on a daily basis. I would rather roll with the punches, wake up every day, and keep going than to stay in defeat.

All that being said, something that helped me feel better this year is helping other people. If you didn’t know, I am a Crisis Counselor for the Crisis Text Line where I spend at least 4 hours of my week speaking to people in crisis. I’ve spoken to children about to enter high school and I’ve spoken to middle aged women who are worried that their divorce is going to cause their children depression. Being able to help them get out of their situations has drastically helped me remember to be grateful for everything that I have.

If you’re struggling to find some light at the end of the tunnel, please, keep going. The light is coming. The darkness is just here to show us how strong we truly are.