Tips For Combatting A Feeling Of Dread
A few days ago at a party I got sucked into one of those long conversations about nothing that last for hours and eventually ends up defining your life.
That’s what’s good about being nineteen: you can start by talking about pizza with some guy from your math class and end up wondering if your last 7,136 days on this earth meant anything to anyone else other than you.
During the night one of the kids said, and not even in a weird way, ‘sometimes I just want to die. But for like only a few seconds’. He looked up at us, eyes a little glazed from something in that glass he held, and continued with how he was happy and everything was great but how sometimes, every once in a while, he just got this overwhelming tsunami force wave of ‘being done with all of it’.
I feel the same exact way.
But so does everyone at one point or another. It’s part of having the privilege being interconnected- which, as a member of the human race, comes in our nerves and bones and hearts.
But it still sucks to feel worthless. Everyone experiences it. That’s why I compiled this list of six of the best this-world things to fight off that wave that occasionally envelopes us all at different points.
1. Black and White Milkshakes: Go to a good diner with proper booth seats and bizarre deco art on all the walls and order a black and white milkshake. It’s chocolate and vanilla in one glass. It’s also heaven.
2. Walking: Take a walk around and look at stuff. It could be any kind of stuff, in any environment, anywhere or anytime. When you get somewhere remote, or somewhere public if you’re risky, scream really loud. Not the angry kind but the ‘I am here and I am staying’ kind. Because you are.
3. Popsicle stick jokes: Why did the scarecrow win an award? He was out-standing in his field! If you don’t think this is funny, go buy a box of firecrackers and eat them until you find a joke you like. Brain freeze is fun too in that way that it makes you laugh all silly.
4. Small Children: They’re so cute! They’re so full of excitement and wonder! Go borrow your niece or nephew or volunteer at a nursery school. Recently I asked a child what he was thankful for and he said ‘Captain America’. Too much.
5. Making friends: Friends are the glue that binds humanity together. We need them for love and humor and support. Otherwise we’d all be wandering around lonely and worried that our outfit looks weird because we can’t find anyone to give us an honest second opinion.
6. Fruit by the Foot: Pretty much the best source of fruit and you can measure things with it as well. Useful and delicious
P.S To that kid I met who said the statement that inspired this article: don’t worry, it took me two months to learn how to whistle, it will come eventually.
Sarah Beth Kaye is a contributor for the Rutgers Review. She is a gemini. Her dualist tendencies show in this piece. Allen Ginsberg was a gemini. So is our editor-n-chief, Amanda Matteo. So is our former editor-in-chief, Ed Reep.
