Everything I ever thought about turning 21 was so far from the reality that I’m starting to wonder if maybe I may have missed a few steps along the way.
I really thought I’d be so much more wiser, so much more experienced at life. Instead, I feel like my life is exactly where it was when I was 18. My list of accomplishments may be two or three bullet points longer, sure. But it feels like I’ve missed out on the things that make one’s story truly remarkable.
I sometimes wonder if it’s a blessing, that extraordinary things don’t quite happen to me and that if they do, they don’t happen often. A sort of privilege that sees me sitting on the pedestal of life in a way that denies me the things that make it special. Do you see what I mean? Except I don’t exactly feel privileged, from where I’m standing. Instead more often than not, I’m caught up in an endless loop of all the things I could be doing with my life this far in and a growing bitterness towards all the things/people holding me back.
Then I look around and I see people a whole lot younger than me who are more mature than I am, with a wealth of wisdom and experience that makes me question my own capacities… just as I realize that they are people a whole lot older than me who, I couldn’t sit down with and have a conversation worth a damn to save my life. And I took it within myself to concede that no one has it all figured out and we all go at this at our own, separate paces.
Expecting my experiences to fall into a certain order simply based on how I see other people living their lives serves no purpose other than to bring me down and it’s about time I stopped looking over my shoulder to see how I’m measuring up with everyone else and just focus on the things that make me happy.
So here I am, 21 and doing pretty alright for myself. Still a little green behind the ears and eagerly, so constantly learning. But I’m confident my life is going in exactly the direction I want it to and I know enough to pace myself and accept that I’m growing up in my own time.