My parents do not believe in medicinal usage for aiding mental illness, thus, I am crazy. I am absolutely crazy. My craziness does begin to cultivate crazy conceptual ideas and arguments that stir there for a while. This is quite possibly the sole reason why I began to believe in some sort of difference between me and my classmate's intellectual ideas, further supporting my decision to major in English at the collegiate level. These random thought are sometimes substantial, leading to research or even an article. Majority of the time, they are useless and damaging.
Almost out of spite of my parent's beliefs, I am also fully susceptible to social media — perhaps even more than an alternate reality, medicine-full Adyson. And the mix of stirring thoughts and social media, I am constantly stirring with crazy. Sometimes this finds its way into jokes, which seem to have a good crowd reaction. Sometimes it sits with me and makes me depressed. Example: Being too young to be a protege. This came to me on the way to the dining hall. I am 19 with no discerning talents. Watched a video of a toddler violinist and became violently upset.
My social media is just an extension of these issues. I have had my fair share of "doomscrolling" sessions, and they always leave me in a melancholic state. On the rare occasion that my friends and I are on TikTok at the same time, I have noticed a difference in videos. Theirs consist of comedic, light hearted videos, edits of celebrities, and viral posts. Mine, on the contrary, is a bleak narrative: sad news posts, meaningless discourse, or god forbid dystopian Day In My Life's.
I am trying to remain cognizant of this. Slightly out of spite for the 12-hour-ban on TikTok, my screen time on that app has decreased significantly. I fear that it did cultivate a lot of my issues. Normally my emotions outpour into random discourse online, but now I force myself to write opinion pieces or force my friends into debates. Way less damaging when they bring me back to Earth rather than the build up of Twitter threads launching me into the nothingness of doom.
Oh, and I do my school work now.
-A.K., life coach
