Grief. The one aspect of my twenties I did not anticipate. Not the type of grief that you experience from the death of a loved one, but the one you experience from the loss of everything else.
Growing up, most conversations surrounding the decade of your twenties involved concepts like making mistakes, learning from those mistakes, finding yourself, realizing there is no one correct path in life, or to simply enjoy everything while it lasts – because things constantly change.
Because of this, I anticipated the change that comes with being an adult and having to navigate the world on my own, and in most ways, I welcomed it. The thought of becoming my own person and making decisions for my life, in my own way, was nerve-wracking, but thrilling. It still is.
But in all of the conversations about change and the excitement of your twenties, grief seems to be treated like a shadow that has always lurked in your bedroom corner for years – it’s there because the lights are out, but that just comes with being in the dark.
The focus of these conversations might be on physical experiences, but never emotional ones. Or if they are emotional, people never directly point to the feeling of grief. I don’t think people intentionally disregard an emotion as important as grief when preparing young people for their turn in “young adulthood”, I think they have just learned how to deal with grief’s constant company.
When I turned nineteen, I was introduced to this kind of grief that prays on the youngest parts of yourself. I had moved 45 minutes away from home to live in residency during my first year of university and had left behind everything I was comfortable with. My childhood bedroom, my hometown friends, my family, and my own identity. I viewed starting university as a chance to gain more perspective on the world but didn’t expect that with every lens or angle I saw through, I would feel a devastating loss. When I started experimenting with new interests and my hometown best friend and I could no longer relate to similar things, I grieved the shift of a decade-long friendship. When I became stressed from a new environment and could no longer turn to my mother for a hug, I grieved the loss of my youngest self who could always be comforted by her mom.
In my early twenties, I became well acquainted with the grief that comes along with discovering yourself, over and over again. Once important self-identifying traits faded into the jurisdiction of my childhood and teen years. The versions of myself I had created and loved were replaced from exploring uncharted territories. The parts of myself I loved were transformed, and although most were transformed into new parts I loved, I grieved the versions of myself I no longer am and all of the experiences that went along with them.
I have learned that the disappearance of something doesn’t dictate the feeling of grief; the feeling of change does. Change is an all-encompassing, beautiful phenomenon that provides different textures woven into the fabric of life. Growth is often a result of change, and with it, there will be growing pains.
I can’t blame adults for not sharing their growing pains. It is a personal journey that becomes normalized with each step of being. But I do find comfort in sharing my grief with my friends and other people who share similar sentiments. Knowing you face grief in your present and future is less scary when a friend can shine a light on your shadow.