I’m stressed, and I need that to be okay.

I didn’t realize I was stressed until I was sitting in my psychiatrist’s office today. Emotion after emotion, thought after thought, rose up and spilled out of me like I was a cup in the sink overflowing from a tap that was left on accidentally. I was stressed, I was under stress, I was stress. My entire body was made up of the coiling gray wires that I envision stress to be.

I feel like it’s not okay to be stressed. We’re allowed to be “stressed” but not Stressed. We’re not allowed to be Stressed because we’re conditioned to believe it’s a symptom of not working hard enough. If you’re doing poorly in a class, it’s because you’re not applying yourself enough. If something fails in the romantic sense, it’s you. If you can’t find a job or an internship, it’s because you’re not striving towards it with enough vigor.

We’re allowed to be stressed but it must pass. It must be something that can be neatly dealt with. We’re not allowed to be weak with it, weak from it. And I’m weak from it. It’s breaking into my sleeping, my waking, my head.

I’m stressed about a lot of things. Some are personal and I’m not discussing. Some are classes that I just finished up, some are familial, some are the overarching overhangs of life after graduation. I’m stressed but I’m not allowed to be Stressed. Particularly about jobs. Millennials are classed as lazy. We’re not getting jobs because we expect things to be handed to us. We’re too addicted to our phones. We’re self-obsessed and expectant of praise.

We’re told that we need to be the best to get jobs, and even if we’re the best, that might not be enough. You need to get an internship. Already have one? You need one more. Then one more. It’s never ending. We’re also told that there are no jobs; that we’re fucked. So we’re fucked either way: if we work hard and don’t get anything, it’s because the job market can’t sustain us. If we work hard and don’t get anything, it’s because we’re too idealistic. We expect too much too soon.

So that’s making me stressed. I’m stressed that I just finished a class where I was told, over and over, that my career choices were not valid. That what I wanted to do was not realistic. That “real journalists” didn’t do what I did. What I do.

I’m stressed and Stressed and I’m hoping it’ll pass and I know that it will.