About a millennia ago, when I was just about to start high school, my mother and I were taking a walk in our neighborhood and at the top of the hill we could see almost the entire town. Across the way, with an unobstructed view was the local college, a school that will remain nameless for now.
My mother and I had our best conversations on these walks, and it’s something we continue to do even today. On this occasion, when my entire life was about to change, my mother asked me a timeless question.
“What do you think you want to do when you’re older?” she asked.
I suspect that she had asked me this question multiple times throughout my life, and along the way my answers went from being a princess and ballerina to something else entirely.
I’m sure I shrugged, but matter of factly said, “I think I’ll probably go to [university name here], get my degrees done as quickly as possible and study something that lets me do whatever I want, like business.”
Somehow at 13, I had predicted what the next eight or so years of my life would look like.
Why? Because I knew my life wasn’t really meant to start in college. How would college for me be anything but a steppingstone into the sophistication of adulthood to which I must belong?
As someone who didn’t drink beyond the occasional glass of wine (don’t worry, I did get drunk a couple of times for scientific purposes), hated committing to plans past 8pm, and generally disliked the copy and paste fashion of women my age, how could I possibly fit in?
Sure enough, I did exactly as I said I would. Highschool was a blur of dancing, singing, and avoiding studying but still getting A+ grades, where every grade contributed to my future, my adulthood.
I went to the local community college first, where I completed my associate degree in one year and met people that I will hold onto dearly for the rest of my life. I started my lifelong dream of travelling the world and came out with an abundance for hope of where I was going next. The plan of my life was unfolding for me, I felt as if the Rubik’s cube had finally completed a side.
For the next two years I attended the big university to complete my bachelors, and one more year following that for my masters. For approximately five minutes, and influenced heavily by Grey’s Anatomy, I thought that I would become a doctor of some sort.
I completed my degrees in business just as I said I would.
I had no idea exactly where life would take me at the end of that journey, but 13-year-old me knew at the very least that much.
In those four years, I did what now I would consider the unthinkable. I worked multiple jobs while taking an overload of classes each semester, I survived a pandemic, forced to finish my degrees online, and became a full-time nanny amid all of that.
I ended my time as a dance teacher, when for almost two decades of my life up to that point, dance had been the center of my world and the largest part of my identity. I met amazing people and started to experience that adulthood I was craving. Little did I know how hard it would all feel, and how much letting go adults have to do.
It’s easy to think adults have it together when it comes to feelings; that things are always clearer because you simply have that adult ability to know what to do. Come to find out adults are all actors, unpaid ones might I add, and life can really knock you down if you’re not careful. Regardless of this, I always had the hope that adulthood was where I was supposed to be, that adulthood was where my life was.
I still feel quite lucky to finally be in that stage, but I can’t help but feel nostalgia for the years I sacrificed to get to this point. I often wonder if I wasted my childhood and adolescence when I should have stopped to have more fun.
There’s a different kind of freedom in childhood, again one that I never fully understood. I understood responsibility, requirements, deadlines. I had a hard time being the kid that stayed out all night playing Man Hunt or sitting in a basement with a group of friends having first kisses and relationships.
I took it all quite seriously. Why would I kiss a boy I didn’t want to be in a relationship with? Why would I treat a friend like that if I didn’t want to be treated like that myself? It didn’t stop any of those people from my past from doing all those horrible things to me, but at least I knew who I was.
Even as an adult I have talks with myself (and my therapist) about taking it all so seriously. Why can’t I just chill the fuck out? Kick my feet up and laugh as I go, let myself be free and kiss whoever the hell I want? It’s aways been the kind of person I wanted to be.
My therapist would tell me that that’s just simply not who I am, at least right now.
Now I am 26 years old and wondering a lot of the same things I did when I graduated.
In a not-so-shocking turn of events, 13-year-old me was still right.
She just had no idea how right she was.
A Series of Observations 