i've always hated "what-if" scenarios because there's never a good way to answer

I love my university, I really do. I love everything about it. I love my classes, I love my majors, I love my friends, I love the Marching Hundred, and I love being an RA. 

More and more, however, I am questioning whether this is where I belong. 

My sleep schedule has been off for at least a month, probably more. I stay awake at night because I can’t sleep, and then I can’t drag myself out of bed during the day. I am suffering what I think might be best described as an existential crisis. 

I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and I have no idea why I’m doing any of the things I’m doing. I don’t know if I have any sort of future in what I’ve chosen to study at IU; and I can’t help but ask myself why I’m paying a university thousands of dollars per year when there are kids in other countries who can’t even afford a meal. I’m not so sure anymore that college is the place for me. I’m not so sure that society is the place for me. 

Come to think of it, I know society is not the place for me- in the world, not of it. 

So what am I doing? Why am I here and not somewhere like Africa, or Papua New Guinea, or China, or South America, doing something to help? Or why am I here and not somewhere on the road? Why am I here and not in New York? What am I doing? What do I really think I’m doing here? I’m tired, and I’m jaded, and I need something new, something fresh and invigorating, I need to help, I need to do some good in this world. Instead of sitting in class listening to lectures about the greats- Kerouac, Ginsberg, Wilde, Stanislavski- I need to get out there and be great. Instead of thinking about everything I could be, should be doing, I need to get out there and actually do it. 

There’s something else out there, something better, and I need it. I can feel it in the distance like a half-remembered dream fragment, I can sense it in the air just waiting for me to taste it, I can hear it in the mountains like the echo of a thunderclap…but I can’t quite see it and I don’t know what it is. I don’t know, I just don’t know. And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do. At this point, I don’t even know what I want to do. I feel a little like I’ve given up, I feel a lot like I’m in a cage; and I’m screaming and fighting it from the inside out but all my attempts to escape go unnoticed and make no difference. 

I need OUT.