I feel like I’m living a lie.

I feel like I just put on makeup and a costume every day and play a role. Why do we have to conform to society? I was living the life of my dreams in the jungle–living cohesively with nature and being with myself. Now I’m back with culture shock.

My return to Toronto brought so much pressure to work harder, work longer–be better than everyone else–and be doing something 24/7. I realize that I can’t handle that people expect me to be something that I’m not.

I guess I’ve gone the last 26 years not realizing what was happening. In the jungle I learned to rely on myself. There’s no wifi to watch instructional YouTube videos or news to know what’s going on in the world. I was in it alone.

Sometimes I hated myself. I didn’t even want to be with myself. There was no where to run, no distractions. I was just stuck with those horrible feelings building up inside me.

But, maybe that was okay and by distracting ourselves from who we really are is the problem. I can’t help but feel a sense of an identity crisis now that I’m back and I feel like my old city life is crumbling around me.

Am I the one destroying all these opportunities or do I just no longer see them that way? I realized I want to be free and everywhere I turn there’s a straight jacket waiting to suck my livelihood from me.

So what’s the next step? Where do I go from here? I can’t hide from society and I’ll have to assimilate again at some point. Most days I don’t even want to leave the house. Just walking to the major intersection in my neighbourhood is as overwhelming as going downtown. There are too many people, street lights and cars everywhere. It’s definitely a stark contrast to the isolation of the jungle.

I’ll hopefully be graduating from university soon, and stepping into a career as a .  . . journalist? I don’t even know anymore what I want to do. Is that what happens to you after five plus years of university? You just forget why you did it in the first place? Then I remember, that’s what social conformity dictated if I want to be “successful” in life.

Right now I have no valid ID (other than my passport, duh), no money in my bank account, lots of debt, no job (I’m an intern), and disowned my former friends.

I’ve learned I don’t really need anything. I’ve cut back on non-essential consumerism and even minimized my beauty routine to go a month longer for that eyebrow wax. I don’t need makeup, nail polish or new clothes–but every T.V. commercial, billboard and blog says women do.

Let’s start a new kind of consumption, of knowledge and experiences–forget materialism. Stuff is just stuff and we aren’t bringing it with us. We need to conserve our resources and respect the environment.

To see monkeys and sloths in their natural habitat made me realize that I wasn’t living in my natural habitat. City life isn’t real–I might as well live in Disney World. It’s a simulation, constructed to make people feel “safe” and protected from the natural world.

What are they so afraid of?

Losing control.

I feel like I live in a bubble just like the Truman Show–sheltered from the outside “real” world. I’ve been conditioned to think and feel that I am not good enough and that I need material things that I don’t.

Things change and I guess I have too. I don’t regret seeing everything in a new light but it’s hard. It makes me see how easy it is to lose everything but somehow I don’t care. I’m making space for a new life, one that fulfills my heart and soul. One filled with real adventure, not just what you see in movies.