Sometimes finding yourself is painful.

Facebook is a funny thing. Facebook is a diary that chronicles all the life events you choose to share. 

I did a funny thing tonight.

I scrolled back in time (you can do that now you know) to my darkest moments. The months where I was the most miserable in my entire life. I scrolled back and read each and every post I made. 

Most were a cry for help, wanting to escape the life I was in. I was almost always talking about taking a vacation, getting away or how I hated the courses I was taking. It was interesting to look back at my thoughts and behaviours from a time where I was utterly miserable for the better half of 10 months. 

Looking back I realized a few things:

- I was in a program I hated

- I was taking courses that I didn't care to be in

- I saw no real interesting job prospects in the field I was in 

and

- I was miserable in my relationship

I guess hindsight really is 20/20 because when I did look back I was able to identify almost to the day the time I started feeling miserable and the moment when it stopped. I'm not the type of person to post all over Facebook that I hate my life, but if you know me you would have been able to see the signs. 

I wish I could rewind and give my 18-year-old self a big hug and tell her it will be okay. Even though I thought I had the next 8 years of my life planned out, it would be only a few short months before that would all come crumbling down. I would find myself single, between faculties, and not knowing what I wanted from life or a job. 

It would take me a while to put myself back together, yoga helped a lot with this. I would meet a boy who I'm still deeply in love with, find a faculty with classes I'm passionate about and land a job in an area I want to be in. 

At the time I felt hopeless, I felt like nothing could fix the pain I was in. I remember that pain, it was excruciating. At 18 I felt like I had failed. But that wasn't true either, I was just finding myself. 

As someone who is typically happy it was hard to go through a phase where I was not happy, and had to pretend to be happy. I learned a lot about myself and those lessons I carry with me each and every day day (which is 5 years later). Being kind to myself was one of the hardest but most worthwhile lessons and though those 10 months were hard they taught me a lot. 

So to all of you out there that are unhappy in your lives, whether you are 18 or 25 or even 30 know that you do not have to stay in the life you are in and continue to be miserable. You can quit... change the way things are. You just have to be brave enough to do it, but mark my words... it will be worth it.