It’s 2022. I’m officially less than six months away from not being a teenager anymore, and if I’m being completely honest, I’m terrified.
I’ve always had a hard time accepting the fact that I was growing up. Understanding that I wasn’t always going to be a little girl with dreams that were way too big for reality; that my only responsibility wasn’t to be getting inside before dinner time. On the last day of Grade 8, I cried more than anyone else, and no one could understand why I was so upset. Everyone else was beyond excited to get away from middle school and finally be a high schooler. For me, high school meant that everything was changing, and I wasn’t okay with that. It was the beginning of school becoming much more serious and important for my future. I felt that I had to start planning out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.
My last semester of high school was completely online because of COVID-19. I was a part of the Class of 2020, so I didn’t have graduation or prom, and I wasn’t able to say goodbye to teachers and friends that I would likely never see again. That lack of closure made it hard to move on and start the next phase of my life. I was suddenly an adult and genuinely had to think about my future. I started university online and was simultaneously over and underwhelmed by the experience. I hardly made any friends, I was stuck alone in my bedroom in Kingston, and I was watching lectures at 1.5x speed. Typical 1st-year experiences, right? I realized relatively early on at Queen’s that I wasn’t enjoying my chosen major, even though I had been planning on doing it since Grade 10. That really scared me because everything that I had planned up until that point was suddenly falling apart, and as a “grown-up” I felt that I had to try to solve everything on my own. Eventually, I did find a field that I fell in love with, but it still seemed like too much of a “little kid” dream to pursue writing or archaeology as a career. It’s hard to love something so much, while also knowing in the back of your mind that it’s not realistic. I feel like I’m at an age now where I have to make decisions because they’re going to benefit me in the future, not because they’re something that I love. I’m sure that there are lots of other people that feel similarly, so it is comforting to know that even though it may feel like it, you’re never really alone.
There is so much pressure to have your life together in your 20s, but I haven’t had the opportunity yet to experience it. I wish that I could stay 19 forever and ignore all these responsibilities, as I’m sure many others feel the same. I feel like the last bit of my childhood has been taken away from me because of the pandemic, and I’m just expected to be okay with that. We’re just expected to be okay with that. There will be a whole group of adults at some point who were never able to experience the last moments of our youth. We’ll finish university, and (hopefully) get jobs, and start our own families, and then give our children the youth that we missed out on. Maybe that will make it okay. We’ll see parents at kindergarten pick-up and reminisce about COVID-19 and how completely and utterly dystopian it felt. We’ll laugh and joke about it, but then will go home and think about the missed opportunities of those years. I hope that I’m not the only one who is suddenly very scared of the future.
Turning 20 feels like the end of something, but what exactly does that mean? Being a teenager feels like you’re allowed to get away with not knowing everything, but as soon as you turn 20 you are expected to have your life figured out. It feels like we’re not allowed to be kids anymore, but who are we without our youth? Staying 19 for a little longer would give us the opportunity to feel comfortable moving on to the next stage of our lives, but that’s not an option. Turning 20 feels like everything is truly changing. I don’t think I really want it to. How do we move on to the next step in our lives when the stairs leading there have been pulled out from underneath our feet?