This November I turned 21. My birthday occurs well within the fall semester, and in the college bubble that is Boulder, it sneaks up on me every year. I’ve never felt older on the day of my birthday before, but this year was different. Looking in the mirror on the day of and the days following my birthday, it actually hit me that I felt older. Whether it’s because my brain’s developing or I’m tricking myself, this feeling hasn’t left me since. When I pictured what my twenties would look like; what I would be doing and all the places I would be traveling to, it never occurred to me that I would feel older. As a young girl imagining my life through Pinterest, I largely focused on the fact that I believed I would end up in a large city. It never occurred to me that I would end up in Colorado, more connected to a movie character that I loved as a kid.
There have been pockets of the year where I’ve felt lost in the churn of classes, life events, and whatever else has gone on. However, the moments where I’ve had peace and felt like myself have been happier and better than ever. I think there’s this notion that as you get older, life gets harder. While I do think that’s true, I believe that there’s this beautiful occurrence of growing into yourself as you get older. As I’m embracing being 21, I’m proving to myself there is more for me in life than the ideas I had when I was younger. This seems like a simple concept, but as someone who has difficulty embracing change, this is a monumental thing for me to tackle.
A few years ago, I read Lana Del Rey’s poetry book, Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass. Its poetry has the same beauty as her lyrics, but coming across one of the passages this year near my birthday, it felt as though it were cosmic timing. From her poem “SportCruiser”, she writes:
So that day, on my birthday, I thought
“Something has to change”
You can’t always be about waiting for you
Don’t tell anyone,
but part of my reasoning for taking the flight class, was this idea that if I could become my own navigator
The captain of the sky,
That perhaps I could stop looking for direction
from you.
In this poem as Lana Del Rey reflects on how, in trying to find direction for herself, she finds independence away from someone who has offered her direction. For me, the person I’ve always looked to for direction is the younger version of myself. In moments where life has been challenging and I’m nervous for the future, it’s easy to revert to my old habits. However, the largest growing moments for me have been the ones where I have embraced where I am in the present. Moving to Colorado for school was one of the hardest and best decisions of my life.
I was just writing about how I’ve had a difficult time embracing Colorado as a home. I think part of that has to do with the fact that in many ways I still see myself as a 17-year-old, sitting in her childhood bedroom procrastinating yet another painting. In reality, I’m a junior in college and now I have to be a functioning adult. However, I don’t think I’m going to take the route of aviation in order to figure out where I am. Colorado has already pointed me in the right direction.
I came to Boulder as an English major — a major I’m completing this semester. I’ve loved to read and had teachers who I was so inspired by, I chose English because I loved it. I was decisive enough to pick a direction where even if I didn’t know what the end would be, I knew I would enjoy the process. Something I always struggled with though, was writing. I’m such an emotional person and I have so many thoughts circling in my head at one time, when writing papers or even in class responses it was so hard to focus on one thing. Then, I found a club where I didn’t only have to focus on one thing.
Her Campus has given me a place where I can ramble for 8 pages about anything I’m interested in. Mr. Fox in Fantastic Mr Fox was the character I was alluding to earlier. I watched that movie at my first sleepover. Later, dialogue from the film became my high school quote and inspired my college essay. Now more than ever I relate to Mr. Fox’s character. Someone who is trying to build a life for himself that impresses those around him, while still writing a column he believes no one really reads. He does have this pride where he feels that he has to overcompensate, something that I think anyone can relate to. Seeing how much I’m still connected to a character I was introduced to even before I was a teenager, it’s so beautiful the way that things can stick with us, even as we change, shift, and get older.
Del Rey found that getting on the plane wasn’t where she could find navigation, it was in what she loved all along.
I could picture myself growing a better sense of which way the wind was blowing
And as I did, a tiny bit of deeper trust also began to grow within myself
I thought of mentioning it,
but I didn’t
Because captains aren’t like poets
They don’t make metaphors between sea and sky
And as I thought that to myself,
I realized
that’s why I write
All of this circumnavigating the earth,
Was to get back to my life
Six trips to the moon for my poetry to arise
I’m not a captain,
I’m not a pilot
I write!
I write
I write! I write. If you told me at 17, sitting on my bed, barely being able to get out my thoughts in my journal, that I would use words — albeit lots of them — to communicate my feelings in over 40 articles, I wouldn’t have believed you. Only now, it’s not just my feelings. Words lead me all the way to my internship, where I have found so much purpose, identity, and pride. I’m a little different from Mr. Fox because I know people are reading my articles — well, at least skimming them. I’m 21 and I have 3 published — and 3 in the works — articles for a magazine at my university. Ones that are at the top of newsletters and reaching people who I never knew I would.
There are lots of changes that are out of our control. However, there are changes that we can see coming, and should embrace. I don’t know what I was necessarily looking for when I obsessively kept checking CU Boulder’s Her Campus Instagram page to see if the application had opened. I didn’t think that writing would become such a large part of my life, I was just looking for some new friends. That’s the type of change I’m embracing as I turn 21. I don’t know what my semester abroad will bring, what interests I will develop or find. What I do know, is that there is more out there than what I pictured when I was 17. I can’t wait to see what this year will bring for me.