21: Aging Disgracefully
Personal update: I am now 21 years old. What does this mean? Well, nothing. The life I have lived so far is not anything to attribute to my age. There are many things I haven’t done that others my age did years ago, and there are many things that I have done that others my age wouldn’t even think of doing. I have been young, and I have been old, and I have been in the awkward in-between. Though, I try to stay out of the middle, hence experience doing “old people things.” I have grandparents who stay up later than I do and mock me for napping. All in good fun, and I do find it funny.
There is a sort of disconnect, however. We all say age is just a number, but we say so while being fully aware that the concept of aging weighs heavily on our minds every time another year of life goes by. We sit in front of our favorite meal or at our favorite place or in front of our favorite movie, and we how far away we are getting from our past and how much closer we are getting to our future. For me, the past is embodying middle-child syndrome and the future is fleeing the state.
A year from today, I might be moving outside of a comfortable driving distance from home. I will be a college graduate before the new year. I will be living in an apartment with my partner by the time my final semester of college begins. I have already put my writing out into the world in literary magazines and in the form of self-publishing, learning as I went that finding an agent is in my future. All of this and I currently sit before my screen still searching and searching for a job in writing.
I didn’t feel older than 18 until I turned 21, the only difference being time. I didn’t realize it, but that was time spent growing, truly growing. 2020 had to be the worst year of my life to date, and I hope it continues to be the worst year of my life. It was the year we all know that started Covid-19. It was the year I turned turned 18, graduated from high school, got my first car, and started college. All of which sucked either because of the pandemic or because I could not handle change.
Since that year, starting over as a sophomore in the fall of 2021 after a semester fully remote, I returned to campus and everything that has happened since has been worth it, despite absolutely nothing making sense. Only, and this might be the most cliche thing I have written here so far, nonsense is the only thing that makes sense.
Embrace the chaos.
We spend too much time trying to fit into social guidelines, acting “reasonably” and keeping ourselves in line because of whatever consequences were drilled into us through our parents, our siblings, our friends, our teachers, our society. The truth is that most things we keep ourselves from doing are not crimes. It is not illegal to go to the grocery store in pajamas. It is not illegal to sing randomly. You are allowed to have a security blanket at 30. You can take your comfort item with you to places outside of the house. You can text people back immediately and in as many separate messages as you want. Take a look at the comment section on any semi-controversial Facebook post. Then try to tell me that you can’t pay with change.
By all means, be too much. Especially when society wants you to be tame. There are some situations that inflict too much emotional turmoil for anyone to expect you to hold it in and stay composed. Forget composure and do what you have to in order to breathe.
You’re allowed to color outside the lines. Make a mess. At the very least, exist, especially when living feels impossible.
That’s how I made it through high school, through 2020, and to my 21st birthday. And I will continue to exist for the rest of my life.
Growing up never means growing old, it means growing comfortable with uncertainty.
