God, When?

The world used to end a lot for me. Apocalypse level type of ending.

I would have a very hard time breathing. The whole house would turn grey, like those rain scenes in a movie where the protagonist is taking blows and we are all sobbing along with them from our sofas. My whole life would flash before me like slides on a projector. The happy moments would come first. I would live inside them for a second, warm with nostalgia. The middle scene would be the transition to where the bullshit would start in succession. Then the end would be the devastating effects and the slides would show a dilapidated state of affairs. I was beaten to the ground, face black and blue. Foolishness would then follow closely and load itself into me in double doses. I would become wildly and blindly angry, screaming like a bloody banshee, literally seeing red.

I would be so dissolved in the emotion that the emotion would become my identity. My whole body would then start to burn up and I would break into a very heavy sweat. My legs would refuse to hold me and I would collapse, heart racing like a horse, chest tight. The whole world would be ending and it wouldn't stop even for the credits. Naturally, like something very abnormally normal, I would start yelling at God dramatically like the most wronged person in the world, voice croaking and tears running down my face.

Whyyyyyyy? Why me? When is my turn going to come? Are you laughing at me now? Aren't you tired of hurting me? What lesson are you trying to teach me?

This was the same God I had claimed not to believe in multiple times. I would then curl myself into the fetal position and stay there until something in me quieted down. Funny thing is, my problems would still be waiting for me when I uncurled. Every single time.

After a few days the problem would dissolve and I would look back and wonder why I made such a fuss over something so temporary. I mean, why do we live so completely inside the sadness while it's happening? Why can't we separate the event from ourselves?

I didn't have an answer, but I sure did have Instagram. I would scroll endlessly and the algorithm would obligingly overwork. The more I looked at depressing posts the more it fed me the same content. The real damage came through Facebook and LinkedIn, where the algorithm would helpfully surface the people I may know. I would open their profiles and read their titles and feel myself shrink.

What am I doing with my life? These people have it figured out. They are living while I am stuck with nothing. God, when? Why can't you locate me like you located them?

I would cycle these questions through every meltdown without fail because I was right, and the whole world was conniving against me.

I deleted social media eventually, but not before cracking the illusion wide open. I was admiring one of those LinkedIn profiles and I read the job description of the position the person was holding. It sounded like something I could do and so I did some research into the company, the person and the position. Trust me, the job title was so long, impressive, and specific that I just had to. This person was literally royalty and I had to find a way to scale myself up to the same level. If they had made it there, why couldn't I? I had almost the same credentials.

The more research I did, the more I laughed and the more relief I felt. Turns out the title was a fancy way of saying a whole lot of nothing.

A sudden light shift happened in me. I realized I had been doing the same thing. An hour after a full apocalypse meltdown I would pick up my phone, take a picture, smile and post it. The caption would be the best part: Living life to the fullest.

I don't know who it was that I was trying to fool. Probably myself. I was the person behind the thirty-second clip, with the title and the perfectly lit moment and behind my clip was someone who had just finished collapsing on the floor. It then dawned on me that everyone had problems. I just somehow believed I was the number one candidate chosen for the special cause of carrying the suffering as if God had looked across all of humanity and decided I was the one.

It took me embarrassingly long to realize how funny and absurd that was.

I grew up and realized all that was nonsense. I cried a little when it landed then took a picture and posted it on my WhatsApp status: #blessed.

Such is life.