The alarm clock buzzed at 5:50 am on the dot. My first reaction was to hit snooze, twice. (Okay, maybe three times.) But in any case, after the alarm went off, I wasn’t going back to sleep. Instead, I was just sitting in bed, scrolling through Instagram and trying not to think about what day it was.
It wasn’t the way I had imagined my 21st birthday to start.
I expected to wake up with a renewed vigor for life, an excitement for the future and feeling elated to let go of all the embarrassment and awkward stages of the past. Instead, I just felt old. I felt lost. I felt like I was losing a part of me that wasn’t being replaced with anything greater.
Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed and started getting ready for high school. Yep, that’s right. On my 21st birthday, I was voluntarily going back to high school. This time I was going to be a substitute teacher instead of an awkward teenager with too many smarts and not enough common sense, so I really believed when I took the job that I wouldn’t feel any different than I had been feeling for the near entirety of my college career. As you’re probably thinking to yourself right now, I was wrong.
On top of being too tired, a little sad, and completely alone (in other years, my brother would have entered my room and played videos of puppies barking “Happy Birthday” but this time he was a little preoccupied), an odd thing started happening as I was getting dressed.
I developed the “first-day jitters.”
Believe it or not, I started getting nervous! Did I look okay? Should I act like a strict teacher or a cool teacher? Do I tell the students that I’m in college? How should I act around my old teachers and administrators? I tried to push all the doubts aside and walk into the school as if it was any other job, on any other day, but it simply wasn’t.
By the time fourth period rolled around, I was on hallway duty outside of the bathroom and found myself unconsciously wondering who was dating who, who the popular kids are and why the heck that girl decided to wear a shirt that was two sizes too small.
There was a moment where I felt just as unimportant and invalid as I had in high school. It didn’t matter that I was wearing dress pants and heels. It didn’t matter that I had a badge and there was absolutely no way that I could get a detention. I just felt … awkward.
On a day where I should have been celebrating my adulthood, I was sitting in my high school hallways rehashing all of my old feelings from when I was a student. I was suddenly feeling very, very old.
By the end of the day, I was just happy to go home. My brother finally wished me a happy birthday, my mother sent me a beautiful and heartfelt message on the minute I was born and my dad made sure to call me at least a dozen times to ask how my day was going. I took a long bath, I read a book and binge-watched F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on Netflix the whole afternoon. After dinner, my parents took me to a bar for my “first” drink, and then we came home and watched a movie while eating a triple chocolate layer cake. It was amazing.
To be honest, it wasn’t until days later that I really embraced the fact that I was getting older. It took a while for me to realize that instead of losing something, I had gained a lot. I was older, sure, but also wiser, with dreams that were coming true, a plan for my life, a car of my own, and a job that I (usually) loved. I couldn’t have imagined that I would be as lucky at 21 as I am.
In high school, I dreamed of lavish dates and romantic encounters. I hoped for a scholarship to the college of my choice. I wanted a Dachshund named Oscar.
A lot has changed in the last five years, (well, except for wanting a dachshund – that will still happen one day) and it’s all changed for the better.
Being in my high school on my 21st birthday helped to gain a perspective, one that I desperately needed. Instead of mourning the years past on our birthdays, we should be celebrating how far we’ve come and where we are going. It’s okay to think about and be grateful for the past, but we shouldn’t be living in it.
(Oh, and for the record, I am definitely a cool substitute.)