I dreamt of being a teenager my whole life. I spent so much time trying to conjure up images of what I’d look like when I was sixteen, but I could never conceptualize how my face would change once the highly anticipated age approached. But, as the daughter of artistically inclined parents, I always had sketchbooks. So, I would litter them with rather unrealistic, cartoonish drawings of an older version of me. She often wore ruffled skirts, puffy sleeved tops, tall boots, had a purse in one hand, and a phone in the other. I titled this series, “Me When I’m 16.”
So when I say I never thought I’d make it to twenty it isn’t because I believed something horrific would’ve happened—it’s because I didn’t think about it at all. My younger self was so deeply obsessed with the idea of being a teenager that no thoughts were wasted on what came after. Why would I contemplate being twenty when I got to be sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen first?
But my anticipation stopped at eighteen for whatever reason; I barely thought about nineteen. Nineteen was the truest filler year of all; a countdown to the day where I could no longer say “I’m a teenager.” It was the year I realized all the ways I’m growing older, yet all the ways I’m still so young. It became clear that I should’ve spent all this time letting myself make mistakes and allowing myself to be vulnerable; instead of always having to be so rational and unaffected.
I think there’s a sort of permanent feeling of displacement when you’re twenty (I’m generalizing and including you because I hope I’m not alone in this). I spent my first two years of college in a city that I had no desire to be in—and it seemed as though the city didn’t want me there either. My body rejected the place. I dealt with year-round, unbearable allergies and the worst anxiety I’ve ever felt. So, I planned to study abroad in London—a big city in a country full of literary history (a dream for my English major-self). I was so eager to live in London for three months: going to museums and parks, experiencing the nightlife, meeting new people, being so far from home–a complete change of pace. I needed that tangible shift.
Just as nearly every detail of my abroad program was sorted, I got an acceptance letter to transfer to UC Berkeley. I felt sick—in an ambivalent way. To be completely clichè, I didn’t believe I would get into Berkeley, which resulted in completely forgetting I applied. So when I opened the portal, I wasn’t scared or anticipatory: I was detached. But the moment I read “Congratulations” my heart raced. Naturally, I immediately told my family and friends, but I couldn’t stop thinking about London—and all my dreams held within it. Now, instead of going to London: I would be going to school only thirty minutes away from home, with an academic expectation that I’ve never applied myself to, in a city rather familiar with my footsteps. It was a shift, but not the life-altering change I craved—one that would curb this constant feeling that I should be doing more, seeing more, becoming more.
As someone who is playing a never ending game of song association, the song “teenage dream” by Olivia Rodrigo has been playing in my mind a notable amount. She perfectly encapsulates how it feels as though so much is already over and lost by the time we end our teenage years. It’s completely dramatic and laughable to an older person, sure—but they’re already done being twenty, I’m still living it!
I never bothered imagining who I’d be when I was twenty because I trusted twenty-year-old me would know what to do and how to be. But I have absolutely no idea. I know less now than I did three years ago. I think I’m meant to “find comfort in the unknown,” but feeling lost on a metaphysical level is an undefinable and complicated thing to describe. It just never feels like I’m in the right place.
But, to go back to Olivia Rodrigo’s song—on her tour before she would sing the song she’d go into a speech about how she wrote the song at a time where she was really scared about getting older, but now she recognizes how getting older is a privilege. Despite my restlessness and constant confusion, I also learned this sentiment as I entered an age that once seemed so old to me; but now I’m here and there’s still so much time (in the best way).