Change is all around me… and that’s okay
If you really knew me, you would know that I’m absolutely terrified of change. Sure, as an optimist it may seem like on the surface I welcome change with open arms.
The thing is, I don’t. I absolutely abhor change.
I’m the type of person that is terrified to make any drastic changes to her physical appearance, unless it’s on a whim. I’m the type of person who’s a picky eater and it’ll take me years before I’ll try a food I hate again.
In the past, I wrote a couple of personal essays on change. Each time I thought I overcame my fear of change, a drastic change would occur in my life.
And because of this, grew to hate change even more.
I avoid change like the plague, or like the flu when fall comes around. In my life, change is something that has done nothing but creep up on me when I least expected it. And this time, it hit me hard.
Unlike the rest of my peers, I was secretly dreading the day I was graduating high school. There would be nights where I would cry, laying in bed listening to “Never Grow Up” by Taylor Swift on repeat. Anxiety and thousands of questions scattered across in my head became my nighttime demons; companions that were unwelcomed guests in the picket-fence life I tried to create for myself.
Instead of counting the days I had until college, I was counting the amount of days I had left with my family and friends. It was things such as moving away from home for the first time, entering a long-distance relationship, and most of all, becoming an adult that scared me the most.
My inbox was still being filled with the same news updates and discounts from Forever 21, but news about move-in day and deadlines about students loans I still can’t comprehend to this day, started to come in too.
By now, I should have figured that the two words “freshman” and “change” were synonymous with each other.
Everyone around me seemed to be happy with moving on and be okay with major changes in their life. Why didn’t I feel the same way?
If you met me four years ago, you would’ve seen a wide-eyed girl with ambitions of becoming a journalist. You would’ve met someone who was terrified to stick up for herself and someone who was scared to trust her own gut.
I realized that in the process of trying to avoid change, I never realized how much I changed.
Four years ago, I would’ve nearly fainted at the idea of giving a public presentation. Today, I’m more comfortable with being in front of a crowd that I ever have been in my entire life. Months ago, I felt ordinary. Today, I know that I can be extraordinary and I don’t have to wait for big moments in order to be that way.
I get to make my own choices and not live by the boundaries other people I presumably thought set for me, but by the limits I set for myself.
Sure, some things are still constant to this day. In some ways, public speaking still terrifies me and I’m finally starting to become comfortable with the idea of eating pickles and tomatoes again.
However with change, I’m constantly shedding my old wings, and exchanging them for ones that will only take me higher… and that’s okay.
When I took my first steps here at San Francisco State, I felt the same misery and dread I was dealing with when I entered my freshman year of high school. After a couple of days living on campus, I realized that even though the changes that have happened within the last couple of weeks have been small, they may have been some of the best changes that have happened in my entire life.
In the midst of it all, I realized that change is all around us. It’s in the colors of the leaves we watch plaster the ground in autumn. It’s in the debates and politics we see on TV. It’s in how we change our hair, or the music we listen to on Spotify. We can never have complete control over what happens to us tomorrow or sometimes even within the next couple of minutes, but without change, we cannot grow.
It’s a big leap of faith, but I know in the next four years I’ll have here at SFSU the changes that are about to come will only take me to better places. At 18, I’m treading the waters of change, but I know at 21, I’ll be walking on water, towards bigger and better things.