So, it has finally happened. I am approaching the end of my teenage years and in five short months I will face the unfamiliarity of my 20s. While part of me is excited to embrace the change, for the personal growth and rediscovery that accompanies growing up, another part of me feels… weirdly heartbroken. For so long, my identity has revolved around being a teenage girl — it feels like all I know how to be.
The closer and closer I get to my next birthday, the more I start to look around and reflect. I reflect on my friends, my family, my interests and my goals, but now, most especially, I reflect on the past. And as someone who watched too much TV growing up, I think about some of my favorite characters, in any given teenage drama, and I have the terrifying revelation: I am older than all of them.
Sure, everybody always talks about the scary parts of becoming an adult, but nobody really prepares you for when you are suddenly older than the fictional characters you grew up admiring and the additional identity crisis that ensues. What do you mean I am officially older than all of the characters in “Pretty Little Liars”? How can that possibly be true, when I spent my childhood and younger teenage years wishing to be like them when I was older? And as crazy as that is, it is not even the worst part.
The worst part is the realization that the chapter of your life spent looking up to those older teenage girls portrayed on television, crossing your fingers that one day you will have their lives, is over. You became the older teenage girl and soon you will not be her anymore. It is devastating.
However, grieving the past is a normal part of life. Everybody has done it and will continue to do it, no matter what stage of life they are at — and that is perfectly OK. It does not mean that you hate everything about your current life or are not excited about what the future will bring. It is necessary to fully process the past in order to keep moving on.
For me, I often struggle with the idea that I did not “live out my teenage years to the fullest,” simply because my teenage years looked nothing like the lives of the characters I watched on my screen. Even though I know, rationally, their lives had to be that glamorous, that interesting and that romantic in order to keep people watching, I still cannot help but sometimes feel a bit lame in comparison.
But, as President Roosevelt once said, “comparison is the thief of joy,” and it most certainly applies here too. People will compare themselves to anybody, real or fictional, and if it does not match up, we feel as though we have done something wrong. While this mindset is common, that does not mean we should be stuck in it forever. Move on, turn on another show and find new characters you want to become.
Now that I will not be a teenager for much longer, I am no longer wondering if my life will be as eventful and wild as, say, Elena Gilbert’s, but instead I am curious if my 20s will look more like the lives of the characters in “New Girl” or “Friends.” The change is slow and gradual, but you begin to reflect on the characters who always seemed to be too far away in age and see yourself in them.
Growing older than your favorite characters, and growing up in general, is scary. It is an almost out-of-body experience; realizing that you will keep moving through life, but your childhood will remain the same forever. OK, that seems obvious, but it is no less astonishing.
For me, I am sure I will have another crisis about it when turning 30, and then 40 and so on. When that time comes, I hope to be able to look back as fondly on my past as I do now and hold tight to the characters that I loved during that time. They were there when I needed them and as I age and move towards my future, I know that I will find new ones too.