Edited by: Sanjana Hira
Tomorrow my friend and I have an alarm set for 8:30 AM. We will make fresh coffee, head to the gym by 9:00, get breakfast, shower, and begin our day. Before noon I will have replied to pending emails from the weekend and made a to-do list for the day. Barring the overwhelming burden that is my thesis, I’ll be on track for the week.
Three years ago, almost to the day, I was in my first year of college and I wrote a piece for Her Campus titled The Broke College Student: An unadvisable dream. I had just moved away from home, my sleep cycle was a mess, and I had never seen the inside of the Ashoka gym, much less had any inclination to work out regularly. Even then, I couldn’t put a finger on why I was so tempted to romanticize a lifestyle that was honestly more draining than it was exciting, but upon some age-won wisdom, I think it was because I never saw myself actually getting my life together. All the markers of any kind of mental stability seemed so out of reach for me that I just looked around at the mess and called it fun. On most days, it wasn’t half bad. There are post-3:00 AM moments from my first year I wouldn’t trade for the world. I have a great fondness for the girl I used to be, she was so lost and making the best of it.
When my friends and I chat, we don’t sound like adults. To ourselves, every day we get worse at pretending to be ‘real people. I had a conversation recently with a girl from my batch who knew exactly where she wanted to work and why. She knew all about the top companies and what kind of resume they want to see from an ideal candidate. Suddenly, I am lost again. My regular workout schedule now seems akin to a baby taking a mouthful of food without having any dribble down its chin. I am an overgrown child walking around pretending I know what I’m on about. I’m writing this, almost a letter to my younger self, telling her that things get better, that she will figure it out and it’ll be easier than she ever imagined—but here I am, two paragraphs in, suddenly realising I can’t offer her anything real.
I suppose growing up is just oscillating between mental states. I see juniors on this campus and think myself decrepit and out of touch with the kids these days. I turn to talk to an Econ major batchmate, and suddenly I am so, so young, and the future is arriving so, so fast. Reading this essay (article? word-vomit?) back to myself, I realise I’m just writing in circles: I’m too old, I’m too young, I’ll be alright, I won’t make it out of here intact. And again and again. It’s reassuring, if not a little uncanny, when I see juniors playing the same songs I danced to three years ago; their faces remind me almost too eerily of people that used to populate this campus when I was their age. This world recycles people and experiences; maybe as a ploy to keep us feeling nostalgic all the time. Or maybe I’m just a romantic.
Tomorrow I will wake up early, and go to the gym, and in a lot of ways that is no different from when I would sleep in till after-lunch and survive on a diet of caffeine and potato chips. I trade in one set of habits for another and put on my rose-coloured glasses and cross my fingers the rest of the way. More than I ever have, right now, I am stuck in limbo. Caught in the balance between stuck in adolescence too long and hurtling into independence. I meant to write a reflection of how far I’ve come, how much more whole I feel, and now this reads like I’m more scattered than ever. At least 19-year-old me would never be able to look at me and tell. She would be so proud of me right now. I suppose she has a point.