An old high school classmate struck up a chat with me on Facebook last night. He had recently graduated and was looking for work. He shared his worries over having possibly made a bad decision by going to university rather than a professional school to advance his career. He wondered where his life would take him from now on.

So I asked him about his dreams. What he wanted out of life.

What he said was an answer that I often hear from people around me. It was rational. Sensible. Future-oriented and built around security over blind leaps of faith. I couldn’t help but wonder again and again, if that was all that there was to life.

Life is what you make of it. But the pressures of the society in which we live and the relationships we have with the people we love can lead us to put our heart’s desires second to everyone around us.

I feel this way, just like this old classmate of mine does. Just like each and every one of us does. And no one is blatantly pressuring me to live a certain way. They ultimately want me to be happy (whether or not their idea of happiness coincides with mine is another question). Security and consistency is the warm blanket we wrap ourselves in, often disguising as ‘happiness’.

The uncertain future ahead of me is a blank canvas, which both excites and terrifies me. Probably more the latter at the moment. I feel constrained because I know what I want out of life, but have the need to consider the financial and comfort aspects in the choices I make. I’m holding onto the blanket of home life tightly, not completely ready to let go. But I know that this life doesn’t make me happy.

No one is pressuring me yet everyone is. I feel like I have a need to explain what it is I will be doing after graduation when really, I just want to jump into it headfirst and see where it takes me. I don’t want to disappoint my family. But at the same time, I wish I could relinquish all these shackles off of me and just go do as I like without worrying about what everyone else will think of me.

I grew up with ‘horror stories’ of people my age who did nothing with their degrees and ended up going back to school. It was as if they were told to me to say that ‘stumbling through your academic and professional career is failing’. When really, it’s not. I know that.

I want to be alone. I want to run away to some far off land for a while with no expectations but the ones I have set for myself. Not the ones deemed by the environment I was raised in.

But I’m so afraid to be alone. To burn bridges wherever I go. To wander forever solo. I want love and support like any other human being on this planet. But I long to be alone because I’m afraid of being rejected.

I am at war with myself.