I am seven months into being 20 years old and I just had the monumental epiphany that I am allowed to be 20.
I spent my younger years conditioning myself to be older than I am (listen to the linked song). And the funny thing is society praises this. The same kids who “were a pleasure to be in class” are the ones who were overlooked.
I was responsible, giving, and always thinking about others before myself. And although these are not bad things to be, I wish I could tell that little girl to be a kid. But at the same time, that little girl helped me become the woman I am today.
I have realized that I am the harshest critic of myself that I have ever met. I am quick to give grace and not receive it. I will forgive and understand everyone else around me but not give myself the same luxury.
I tell myself that I should know better and that I should be better. That somehow, I should have had the tools to figure out everything that’s ever happened in my life. But that is not fair. You cannot blame yourself for not knowing what you did not know when you did not know it.
Recently a good friend and I were talking about the pressure I put upon myself and she said, “Would you talk to a friend the way you talk to yourself?”
I am learning to be my own friend.
I am learning to find who I am apart from other people. Apart from how I can help them, how they can validate my worth, how they can be what I need, and vice versa.
I am learning that I can mess up. I can make mistakes. I can be 20.
I am allowed to not know what the next 5 years look like or even tomorrow. I can ask for help and still be a strong person. I can cry over boys, say the wrong thing, and write things in my journal that I will laugh at when I am 45. And those things I write about are not juvenile, even if I will look back and think about how silly that 20-year-old girl was.
I am simply figuring things out just as much as the next person.
I want to look back on this decade as a year of emotional growth, but I do not want to put so much pressure on myself to do the growing that I do not allow myself to be where I am at.