My mom describes my first moments fondly, as I (allegedly) didn’t cry while the nurses were cleaning me up. Instead, I looked around the delivery room before locking eyes with her, as if I knew that she was what I was looking for. From the very moment I was born, I knew what I wanted and what I was doing. I wish I could say that I held onto that sense of understanding, but life, to put it plainly, can’t be that simple.
I had a full blown mental breakdown in the months leading up to my 20th birthday – I even wrote a story about it, which can be found on this website. I felt like I had lost myself, or at least, the person I was growing up. My parents had also begun renovating our house after 20 years, which only added to my internal turmoil. If the house I’ve lived in for my whole life is unrecognizable from a year ago, how is it still MY home? Now, over a year later and coming up on my 21st birthday, my attitude toward growing up has changed. I’ve grown to appreciate the journey for all its ups and downs, as cliche as it sounds.
My life has taken me to a lot of different places in my 20 years of existence, all of which have taught me new lessons. We never stop learning, which is part of the human experience: from the day we are born, we learn everything from scratch, and as we get older, those lessons become more and more complex.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned is arguably the simplest: I need to relax. I tend to struggle with seeing the big picture because I get too caught up in the details. I panic about the possible outcomes instead of focusing on achieving the outcome I want. I do this at the end of every semester, when I freak out about my grades, only to pass with a 2.5 or higher. These things happen more often than I care to admit, but this skill is my biggest work in progress.
The other big skill I’ve been working on is to not dwell on the things I can’t change. I’m a lot better at this one, but some things still give me more trouble than others. I tend to feel my emotions intensely, and I am way too sensitive to let everything affect me. Therefore, I don’t make time for things or people that do not make me happy. There are people I miss, but I have come to learn that sometimes, hard decisions make life more enjoyable. Since allowing myself to let go of the negative aspects of my life, I have felt happier, been more at peace, and experienced a lot less drama in my life.
Something that helped me come to terms with growing up was moving into my first apartment. I thought that an apartment would be the next step up from living in the dorms. I was very, very wrong. Living in the dorms provides a lot of structure: the dining halls have specific hours, the space is much easier to keep clean given its small size, and I didn’t have to clean my own bathroom. Moving into the apartment came with a learning curve, of course, but it has also made my college experience infinitely better. I have never put so much work into curating a space for myself that I would enjoy. I built furniture, meticulously chose posters based on content and color schemes, bought a mattress, and invested in decor for the first time in my life. My bedroom puts me at ease. I’ve gone through the same process in the living room and kitchen to create an eclectic, yet cohesive, sanctuary. I never knew how much joy could come from building a space for myself.
Tradition has been another pillar for me. While my family has never been overly vocal about the concept of tradition, we follow customs that have been passed down through a few generations. As I’ve gotten older, and my life has started to change, I’ve grown to appreciate and cherish our family traditions. They give me a sense of stability. For example, we always sit in the same seats and eat the same dishes on holidays, frequent the same restaurants on vacations, and bake the same cookies every holiday season. We even rehash the same stories every year. When my life is perpetually changing around me, I can still rely on my family and our traditions.
Growing up has its ups and downs, and coming to terms with your life changes is a lot of work. However, change is the only constant in our lives. I’m far from having my life figured out, but paying attention to the world around me and recognizing where I fit into it has helped me accept where I am (both literally and figuratively). I don’t need to know what I’m doing, where I’m going, or how my life is going to play out. I don’t even need to know who I am, which is good because I don’t know that either. All I need to know is that I control my own happiness, and the rest will fall into place.
I guess I’ve learned that turning 21 comes with a lot of wisdom.