I am well aware that I'm growing up in a time where the coming-of-age story is highly romanticized. There are children constantly indulging in their sadness, waiting for a time to right their wrongs and have their lives magically come together, like loose threads finally being tugged at.
It's not that easy.
I grew up guilty of the same feeling. In all honesty, I'm probably still guilty of it now. It's to the point where my sadness has become such a part of my daily life that I don't realize how intentional I'm making it. I realize that's a problem. Now onto fixing it?
The first semester of college has been interesting and highly convoluted. I feel like a jumbled scrunch of yarn, clawed and pulled apart by the claws of some neighboring feline. I guess everyone feels the same way. It's the rite-of-passage into adulthood, trying to transition into college and trying to find new legs to walk into a new life. It all feels incredibly cliche, the homesickness, the not letting go of the past, the struggling to find new friends and make new memories with people. It's all something that I feel like I would see in a really bad indie flick, but it seems to be happening all around me. Being back home for Thanksgiving break has an incredibly weird aura around it. When I first came back for Fall Break, I spent a good portion of the short-lived visit in a whirlpool of nostalgia. I sat in my room and felt like a stranger checked into a hotel room. My little carry-on suitcase was sitting on the overwhelmingly empty floor, and all I had on my bed was a lumpy pillow and a throw blanket.
Now that it's been a little longer, I sit in my room and still feel wistful about the past. I woke up this morning and looked around, and with the old soul I have, reflected. I could see my past self groveling over calculus homework and stress-crying about my grades on my giant mahogany desk. I saw my prepubescent self sitting in front of my mirror worried about my appearance way more than necessary. I saw myself sitting with my window open and thinking about the first boy I ever loved. There are many ghosts of former selves lurking around in my room, and it's a startling realization in that I enjoy their company. They're a constant reminder that I'm always growing, that I'm always aiming for something more.
I'm 18. I can't stop thinking about the future. For all my life, college was the next big step. I spent middle school, barely, and high school, very much so, working to make sure I got into a good college and working to make sure I would find myself in a place that I enjoyed. I finally made it, and I am proud of myself. But now, what's next? My career. My family.
Going into college, a lot of people told me that I would change my major. I didn't believe them. I was so firmly rooted into the concept of being an English major that I never could've imagined myself even doubting that path in life. Even though it's only been one semester of college, I'm starting to see the clarity in the structure of English classes, and I'm not sure if I enjoy them exactly. And college is all about self-discovery and doing things for yourself, right? After taking two linguistics courses, the idea is more and more alluring, and I'm probably going to pursue a linguistics double major with political science. Nothing is set is stone, but I finally feel like, after a very long and strenuous journey, I have the slightest sense of direction in life. However, this brings up the problematic question, "What can I do with a linguistics major?" To many people in my life, law school is the glaringly obvious answer. I can write, I can talk, and I argue. But what do I really know about law school? I have exposure from a very dramatized depiction on television and the warped generalizations that float through society. How do I figure out what it's like if I can't get a trial run? So maybe the job that I want and that I will thrive in hasn't been officially made yet. Maybe I'll find myself doing something completely different than I anticipated. Either way, I still have a lot of questions left, and it's definitely not as easy as before when my goal was college. College as a goal was easy, very strategic and very calculative: do well in classes, be well-rounded, dip your toes into your passions, and be a good person. Setting your sights on a future career path is much harder. There are so many other variables you need to take into consideration.
So my career seems like a dead end, and that means that I focus and channel all my energy into my future family. I was never the girl that dreamed of her wedding as a kid. I never even thought about where I wanted to get married or where I wanted to go on a honeymoon or any of the little intricacies about my future romances. To be quite frank, I thought it was naive and pointless. What good is a little girl's dreams going to do on the highly fluid future? Well, I'm not a little girl anymore, and all the hopeless romanticism I suppressed has come bursting out like fireworks. I don't want to sound silly, but I absolutely cannot wait to get married. I can't wait to know that I will have someone to come home to and someone that will be by my side no matter what. I can't wait to know that, even after the worst of days, I can come home and see the person who chooses to stay with me. I can't wait to have that stability and that kind of constant. I can't wait to live with the person I love and do silly things and goof off. Cliche, yes, but I know I'll be happy. I can't wait to go on vacations with my future husband and ironically say, "Honey, I'm home!" for the first couple of weeks (or months?) after we buy a house together. I think about it a lot, to be quite honest, but I think that's okay. I think it's okay to look forward to a great future when my present is so unstable and shaky. I think that's normal, and I'm not going to give myself any judgment for that.
I feel like I've achieved some kind of spiritual coming-of-age, where I've figured out the little secrets behind feelings. I always seem to know why I feel some way, and I always can find a source of my emotions. Not always, but enough times to where I feel rooted enough in my maturity. I tell myself that I'm different from other people, that the thoughts I have and the perspective I have on life is more, more meaningful and more insightful. I could be wrong, but I could very much be right. Either way, that is how I feel, and I know that I am valid in that. I feel wiser, and that's, ironically, probably a very dumb thing to think as a new 18-year-old, but I can't help to feel like I've finished my arduous adolescent journey, that I've overcome some horrible emotional adversity and am now in the process of achieving adulthood-nirvana. But my coming-of-age has not nearly ended. It's only begun. It's like I finished my practice run, and now everything is about to really count. And that's horribly intimidating, but also a bit exhilarating.
That's all, for now.
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