flâneur

magnitude - by Molly Mielke - Milky

milky.substack.com · 797 words · saved by 1 readers

Many of my similarly-aged friends graduated college recently. Having finished school over three years ago (long story), I wish I’d expected how painful and overwhelming adult life starts off feeling. I have vivid memories from around this time of walking around aimlessly late at night, wearing sunglasses to hide my tear-stained face and unmistakable look of utter lostness. Looking back, I realize now how much of the pain I experienced came from the crushing mismatch in expectations between what I’d promised myself adult life would look like and what it ended up actually feeling like. Adulthood felt like living with a perpetual heaviness that I’ve come to learn is just the weight of assuming full responsibility for yourself. I resented this deeply. Where was the feeling of lightness and limitlessness I’d promised myself? Instead, all I felt was a deep sense of directionlessness and an omnipresent guilt about all the things I wanted to do and be but hadn’t and wasn’t yet. It’s much easie

Many of my similarly-aged friends graduated college recently. Having finished school over three years ago (long story), I wish I’d expected how painful and overwhelming adult life starts off feeling. I have vivid memories from around this time of walking around aimlessly late at night, wearing sunglasses to hide my tear-stained face and unmistakable look of utter lostness. Looking back, I realize now how much of the pain I experienced came from the crushing mismatch in expectations between what I’d promised myself adult life would look like and what it ended up actually feeling like.…

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