Have you ever felt lost? Searching for something to be passionate about or simply looking for anything to do, anything at all? You look on social media and you see people with everything you have ever wanted. You scroll, you see your friends all having fun without you. You just want to find true happiness with yourself but you feel alone, overwhelmed, and lost. You ask yourself, how can I be truly happy?

Entering my freshman year of high school I was beyond excited. I had a great group of friends, a sport I loved playing and most importantly, a loving family. High school was going great and it seemed as if the next four years were going to be the best times of my life, but then everything changed. 

COVID-19 took away two years of my high school experience, and it completely changed me. 

During quarantine, I lost connection with friends, I wasn’t going outside enough, and the days were gliding by like weeks. By the time I went back to school, everything felt extremely different to me. Although I still had great friends, and a loving family, I felt really alone.

In the blink of an eye, it was senior year and I truly did not have anything figured out. I felt overwhelmed about going to a community college, while all of my friends were going to universities. The sports season had ended and I didn’t have any other hobbies to do. All while I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do for my future. I felt overwhelmed, alone, and lost. 

Months passed and the next thing I knew I was moving into my house in Isla Vista, set to attend City College. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life; I missed my family, I struggled meeting new people and I didn’t know what my true purpose was. I just wanted to be happy. But then after so much uncertainty about the future, I decided I needed to stop searching for happiness and create it.

After a lot of reflection, I realized I needed to talk to someone about my challenges. So, I reached out to the people I love most, my mom and dad. They encouraged me to step outside my comfort zone, to embrace nature and appreciate its beauty, to connect with as many people as possible, and to enjoy the little things in life. Those conversations with them became a turning point, and slowly, my life began to completely change.

I applied everything they said into my life and I realized I wasn’t entirely alone, I just wasn’t putting myself out there and going outside enough. It wasn’t that I felt overwhelmed because I didn’t know my purpose but it was because I hadn’t given myself the chance to find it. 

The clock ticks and the next thing you know it is a whole year later and I have never felt better in my entire life about anything. I am truly happy. I have met so many great people, I have found a love for the gym and my passion of becoming a sports journalist. All of the feelings I had of being alone, overwhelmed and lost went away. Though they come up here and there, I look how far I have come and realize there is no reason to feel this way. 

I still don’t have everything figured out, but I finally have a grasp of how to be truly happy–through connecting with people and nature to not feel alone, finding hobbies and things to do to not feel lost and by taking every single day as a blessing. Realizing that one should do whatever they enjoy every single day–I think that is what makes a person truly happy.