Temporary Escape

Some days being in my QLC is an all encompassing situation. No matter what I do, I negative thoughts plague me from the moment I wake up to the moment I go back to sleep. What am I doing? Why aren’t I happy? What does make me happy? Why am I missing my best friend’s birthday?

Sometimes things in life are hard to deal with, and to cope we change memories and escape into fantasy. One of the things I do when life is hard is lose myself in a good book. For the amount of time I’m reading, I find myself lost in a different world with new acquaintances and other people’s problems to face.

The only ones who will really understand what I mean are other true readers. I have friends who pick up books once in awhile on the plane if they have to, and I’m not going to judge those who grab gossip magazines instead. Anyone who knows me knows I just love celebrity gossip. And I won’t judge those people who sit and zone out on TV reruns, as I have certainly done that as well. Of course now I’ve seen all of the Law and Order episodes, as well as Monk, Friends, Will and Grace, and How I Met Your Mother. So I’m kind of out of marathons at the moment. But in reality, my whole life I have lost myself in books.

There are the stories you stay up all night to finish, and the ones you wish you could bring to the dinner table and keep reading, if only you were still young enough to justify that behavior. I clearly remember staying up into the early hours around third grade or so, becoming intent of finishing The Dollhouse Murders. Now that was a creepy book. There are other books I remember not being able to put down when younger, The Blitz Cat, Shade’s Children, and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I actually still read Shade’s Children, and a good friend of mine from high school would attest to the fact that it is totally scary and unputdownable. Yes, that’s a word.

When I was traveling throughout Southeast Asia I turned into an even more fanatical reader. At first it began as a way to cope with the complete and utter boredom of waiting hours for buses or surviving overnight train rides. I didn’t want to finish the books too quickly though, as finding English language books could be tricky, and expensive, in certain areas. Some books I was forced to read because my options were the not-so-great-English-book or the book-I-had-always-wanted-to-read, but it was printed in German. Or French. I ran into so many copies of Chasing Harry Winston in foreign languages I was going crazy. Now that I think about it, I never did read it after I returned to the States. I guess I gave up and let that one go. However, I did find some amazing books that I devoured on long bus rides in cramped quarters, or lazing on the sunny beaches of Thailand. I read Bryce Courtenay’s The Persimmon Tree in a matter of days (great love story set during WWII), discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and am still completely terrified of Frank Schätzing’s The Swarm. I read everything from fabulous fiction like Brick Lane, to the scary historical fiction of The Historian. I found a great new author in Theresa Rebeck with Three Girls and Their Brother, which I traded for a tough, but rewarding read, in Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss. These books helped carry me through the days when I was homesick, physically ill, and certainly lonely.

In the Quarter Life Crisis all of these moods can strike. You can live a mile away from where you grew up and find yourself homesick for those high school days when everything made so much sense. I still find myself longing for sleepovers with endless laughter and the chance to decorate a friend’s locker for her birthday. Life was easy, even if it didn’t seem like it at the time, and you couldn’t wait to move on to the next chapter. Who wasn’t excited to leave for college? Of course once you were there it eventually ended as well. And now look where we are - wishing for football games and a cold day to skip class and eat Shirley’s grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup. Homesick doesn’t necessarily mean you want to be sleeping in your childhood bed, it means you miss what once was and is no more.

Being sick in the QLC is definitely worse than it was during childhood or in college. You go to work with the flu because that budget meeting is more important than the calculus test you could retake. You feel like you may pass out, but you manage to prop yourself up against your desk and keep reading reports. I bet this is pretty American, since we seem to live with the fear that if you don’t do it, someone else will. And that someone might get your promotion, even if you spent the last year earning it. In countries where they have upwards of 5 weeks vacation there’s no way this fear is as all consuming as it is for us in the States. Sick days are probably spent lounging on down filled pillows while they enjoy their government sponsored medical care. Instead I spend three hours (which I try to pass off as a lunch break) angrily glaring at patients who go ahead of me at urgent care even though I swear I was there first.

Loneliness is a feeling the creeps up on me when I least expect it. As an only child I think I can battle the circumstance of actually being alone better than some of my friends. Those who grew up in busy households thrive on noise and others to fuel their days. I am used to entertaining myself and seeking a good friend if I get bored. But loneliness is quite different from physically being alone. It’s that feeling that strikes when you realize you are completely overwhelmed at your QLC job and nobody can help you. Or when you and your significant other of however long end the relationship and no matter what your best friends do for you, the ache of losing your ultimate best friend will not go away. Maybe it’s when a friend dies, or you realize a good friend has changed and your relationship can never be the same. It happens to everyone, friends grow apart and lives transform under all sorts of circumstances. People have babies, friends move, roommates get promoted and no longer have time to talk about your life in excruciating detail.

There are so many other feelings and situations that boil up during the QLC. I escape into books and spend hours with Hermione Granger, Lizbeth Salander, and Rebecca Bloomwood. Other QLC friends zone out with the Kardashians and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Most guys in the QLC tend to disappear into video games or ESPN. The reality is that there are situations we have control over, and ones we don’t. You can decide to take a mental health day, but you can’t control your best friend having a baby. Face the Real and manage your QLC as best you can. Take a breather from situations beyond your control. If it all becomes too much then escape to Not Real for a while - but bookmark your page, turn off the marathon, or save the game for another day, and face the world again when you can.