I Had To Learn To Be Selfish

"And I've got this dream..right inside of me. It's time to let it show."

This semester has been arguably the hardest stretch of life I've had since graduating. I thought I had all these amazing friends, a steady job, a career goal I could meet. Then, friends go away. Jobs fail and somehow, that goal was washed away with it.

I. Lost. All. Motive. To. Do. Anything. I didn't have the drive to go to class, I was slacking behind in work and then, I lost the feeling of what my classroom was supposed to be. I've known I was made to be a teacher since I was four.I couldn't feel it anymore. I couldn't hear the kids or feel the environment. I was lost and scared. When I lost that feeling, I lost everything I had ever known. I still knew what I was supposed to do, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So, there I was. With a 56 in my math class, F A I L I N G my education midterm and hopeless.

If I'm honest, I'm still kinda there. I'm absolutely stuck. I didn't know what to do with anything. So, I did what anyone should do in a situation they don't feel comfortable in. I made a plan and decided to leave. Would this negatively impact people around me? Uh, yeah. Would these cause problems with me and my friends? Oh, yeah. But they were part of the problem and I had to OWN that. I could not sit back and let people decide what I was going to do anymore. This was my life, my adventure, my world, MY dream. Not theirs.

I got called a lot of things once I made my feels known. Vindictive, stupid, inconsiderate, hateful, and selfish. Selfish. That's the one that stuck out the most to me. The girl who had drug her friends up from the floor, the girl who would give her last dime to any of them. The girl who literally would lay down and die if it meant protecting them. I was being selfish. At first, I was angry. Then I realized I was being selfish.

And being selfish is okay.

Here's why: Being selfish is okay because when you've given your all for others your whole life, sometimes you have to stop and make sure you're okay. Had I not taken a chance and the time to notice how bad I was suffering, who knows what could have happened. I had to worry about me, and if that makes some people mad, oh well. I knew that the one thing I thought could never change in my world, had vanished. I knew what I wanted, what I needed more than anything. I had just lost sight of it. I had to do what I, not anyone else, needed to do to find it.

This has taught me so much. From here on out, I get to do that. I get to put the needs of myself over the wants of others. I will be humble and apologize if I disrupt their flow, but at the end of the day...it's me vs me.