When I was 5 years old, I used my mom’s lipstick, put on her heels and acted just like her because I wanted to be her. At 16 years old, I remember saying to myself that I couldn’t wait until I was 18. At that time, being 18 meant freedom and independence. I learned pretty quickly that being 18 didn’t mean that at all, especially when my parents set my curfew. At 18 years old I said I couldn’t wait to be 21, then I could finally do what I want. Now here I am at age 20 thinking that the things that I want are just barely out of reach but still there.
Every once in a while, we look back at the past. We start to miss the times where we could drive five minutes and be our your best friends who are now in four different states. What we couldn’t see ahead of us is now staring us straight in the eyes. Our futures are so close that we can just taste the responsibility.
Lately, I’ve come to the realization that I am going to have to be making some very important decisions fairly soon. Adult decisions! (Insert gasp here). I know, crazy. Thankfully, life so far has been everything I’ve imagined and more, with a few reality checks along the way. I’m making adult decisions with my adult grocery list and adult routine of actually trying to take care of myself. However, this isn’t even adulthood. This is what we’ve been waiting for since we were 16. This is what we’ve been waiting for since we were 5 and wearing our mom’s heels, pretending to be glamorous adults.
So why were we so ready to grow up?
Now we realize that growing up so fast wasn’t the answer. We wanted independence when we needed guidance. We wanted to buy new things when we needed someone to tell us to save our money. When we thought we were ready to be on our own, we still ended up calling our parents at the end of the day. Being on own made us realize that we weren’t really ready to be on our own. We just needed to learn what being on our own meant.
We think we know what we want for the future. We need the guidance to get us there. We’re still learning how to “adult,” if you will. We’re still learning how to do the things we strive to do and we’re still learning right from wrong on a whole new level. Maybe that’s why we feel as if we’re losing ourselves or our balance – because we’re just starting to walk again.
This new chapter in our lives is scary because it’s unpredictable. You can have the best-laid plans and it won’t be enough to predict the future. This is why we change—because we adapt to these new experiences. We learn along the way.
The only thing we can do is our best and believe that it will be enough even if things don’t work out quite the same as we expected.
Be the person your younger self would be proud of, keep your dreams and keep moving in the right direction. This is what growing up is. It’s a brand new start.