The older I get, the older I feel. That’s an obvious statement, but it isn’t attributed to physicality, appearance, or even responsibilities. It comes from recognition that I am continually becoming a new version of myself. That being said, getting older doesn’t make the changing easier.Â
At 21 years old, I have only lived around 23% of my life. In that time, I have outgrown myself cyclically, sometimes not realizing that I’m already my newest version. Other times, I have reluctantly faced growth, feeling it as it’s happening and pretending it’s not.Â
Entering my final year as a college student, I feel the anxiety of adulthood and it forces me to look back. Milestones have a way of making you sit with the nostalgia of who you were. I remember the friends I once had, the places I once frequented, and it’s hard to accept those things as behind me without wondering how I could have kept them around. How do you fully leave the past behind when part of you doesn’t want to?Â
It’s really easy to blame yourself for losing those pieces of your life. Though the truth might be that you didn’t lose as much as you gained. What could be considered loss can also be considered something you outgrew. It isn’t a requirement to know the specific moment in which you outgrew your surroundings, it’s only a requirement that you do yourself justice in realizing who you’ve become.Â
In outgrowing yourself, you make space for new relationships, beliefs, experiences, perspectives. The new can also bring fear, but if you stop growing then what is the point? In my experience, it has felt like everything is changing and it’s outside of my control, yet everything I couldn’t control, I was never meant to. I was simply outgrowing what I didn’t yet know it was time to outgrow.Â
So if you’re standing at the edge of something new and grieving who you used to be, know that it’s okay. It’s okay to miss the past and still move forward. It’s okay that you are not who you were and to not have kept old ties around. You were never meant to stay the same, you are meant to grow into someone new, sometimes more than once. That’s not a loss. That’s the whole point.