If you know me then you know that I am very predictable. You know I like to follow an unofficial schedule and timeline throughout my days and weeks.
I have a set work schedule, I try to go to the gym at the same time on the same days every week, I cook a lot of the same meals, I drink the same drinks, I shower every night around 8 p.m. if I can, and I have a hard time with the unknown.
I’ve always struggled with not having a plan for my day or night out. It’s difficult for me to “go with the flow” regardless of how badly I want to. It’s like something in me makes me incapable of spontaneity. I don’t want to be that girl — the girl who always needs a plan or some sense of control, but here I am.
I’m not entirely sure where my need and desire for control and order comes from, but that’s for a therapist to decipher. It’s oftentimes the case that a lot of our “issues” in adulthood stem from our childhood and our parents — but my parents were great! My childhood was great! So what could it be?
I’m not a therapist or even close to being a licensed professional. But I think I love controlling my schedule and the familiarity with my life because I need to feel some sense of order when I feel so lost in the unknown (I think I just made a breakthrough).
This world is so vast, so complicated, and let’s face it, just down right scary. It’s scary to navigate avenues of your life you aren’t quite familiar with yet by yourself. It’s scary to not know what comes after graduation. It’s scary to have to think about the question “what’s next?”
When I think about how my life is going to drastically change after next August when I move out of my college apartment, all my friends move to other cities, and everyone having adult jobs, I get excited!
But understanding that the next year and a half is the last time me and all my closest friends — essentially my second family — will all be guaranteed to live in the same city is a hard pill to swallow.
Yes, I have time to digest it, but it’s also the kind of change I don’t know how to process yet. And with that uncertainty I have to turn to the things in my life that I can control and I can focus my attention on.
Life is already so complicated, and we are thrust into a world that we aren’t quite familiar with yet when we go to college. Coming to college was one of the biggest transitions into adulthood for me and every other college freshman. I can’t say it was one of the most enjoyable years of my life, but I did learn a lot.
I learned independence, grace, and perseverance in one of the toughest periods of growth in my life thus far. I learned what it meant to be on my own for the first time — the ups and downs that came with it. I could come and go as I pleased everywhere on campus regardless of the time without having to text anyone, which was different and new, but also quite lonely.
I think I find comfort in feeling known. Feeling like people know me — where I’m going to be, what I’m doing, and where they can find me makes me feel like I’m seen and remembered. And that’s all anyone really wants. To be remembered and known. Because to be known is to be loved.
I find love and comfort in the fact that people know what they’re going to get when they talk to me, wonder where I am, or know what I’m doing. To know me is to love me and I love you right back.