In August 2010, I obsessed over one thing: purpose.
You see, in August 2010, I was 18 years old, freshly graduated from the halls of Columbus North High School. Armed with my Top 10 Percent tassel, two senior project binders and a list of accomplishments pretty decent for 'that weirdo home-schooled kid' no one wanted to partner with in freshman Biology, I was absolutely determined to find my purpose and follow into the gloried halls of adulthood.
Back then, that meant marching down the road paved by so many plucky youngsters before me. It meant going to college, earning a degree, going to grad school, earning another degree, and then stepping seamlessly into my ideal job and eventually giving a TEDTalk before jetting off into the clouds, on another wild adventure. No side trips. No detours. Why fix what isn't broken? It worked for other successful adults, so it will work for me.
Right now, in 2016, thirteen months after graduating college, I look back at past-Becca with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
On one hand: Oh my god. Past-Becca has no clue what her own brain is about to unleash. When her depression manifests and seduces her anxiety, the combination will knock her sideways and leave her crippled. It will keep her up at night, gnawing on her fingernails, wondering how her own mind — her safest haven and strongest weapon— could suddenly turn against her.
But on the other hand: Look at this kid! Striding across the graduation stage, ablaze with pride, ready to roll up her sleeves and sink her fingers into all the brave new world has to offer. The prospect of new places, new faces, new knowledge, new experiences leaves her chest bursting with lightness. She has test scores! She has scholarships! And yet somewhere deep inside...
...she doubts.
And I wish she hadn't ignored it.
But past-Becca had too many ambitions. To make art, to make the world better, to tell stories.
She also wanted what many teenagers who feel lonely and pent-up and misunderstood want: To disappear elsewhere, and then reappear on the night of the ten year reunion, unrecognizable in the diffusing glow of their own splendor. To be out of someone else's league, for once. To go so far up into the stars that all your teenage shortcomings are forgotten because who cares? You're super important now!
I cannot blame her for following that plucky-youngster road. That wouldn't be fair. What were the alternatives? Pop culture has plenty of college drop outs but a glaring lack of "people who intentionally didn't go to college until they figured some stuff out first." Her parents both have advanced degrees, so...what was a girl to do?
If I was granted, by some aspect of magic or divinity, the chance to go back in my own life and make something different, I would return to past-Becca on her last day of senior English.
I remember this day with pristine clarity. Past-Becca wore her class of 2010 sweatshirt and hung blue and white tassels off the sides of her glasses while her friends giggled. Everyone was high on the freedom, or rather on the close proximity of freedom. Seven more class periods, and then — BYE!
On that day, Rick Weinheimer asked his students to go around and share their college of choice, as well as major of study. Past-Becca went next to last. As her peers answer, she picks at the rip in her jeans. She had decided weeks ago: Ball State University. Major? Well, the details were fuzzy. Teaching, for sure! But what subject(s)? English? Japanese? What about theater?
What about not teaching?
Beyond that, the possibilities seem infinite. What if she takes an anthropology class and finds her calling in the jungles of Madagascar, on the trail of some elusive monkey? There's always theater. Maybe her talent will bring her to the world's most coveted stages. But astronomy also has a strong appeal. What's more infinite than space? And her art! Does that just get shoved under the bed?
What if — ?
What if — ?
What if she doesn't know yet?
That's it. That's the moment when I wish the present me could burst through the classroom door and collapse in front of past-Becca and take her hands and plead, "Don't go yet. Do not go...yet."
Let her bewildered eyes drink in the sight of her own self, six years into a lifelong battle with chronic illness. Let her see that we are still here, still kicking, but let her know. Let her trace the scars she will put on her own skin.
I only wish, you see, to say to her what no adult said until it was too late.
"Don't go until you're ready. Finish growing up. Spend some time out of school and see where your thirst takes you. Buy a plane ticket and see more of the world. Blog about ice cream. Take pictures of old churches and beautiful flowers. See the Cliffs of Moher and the Mona Lisa. It won't stop your depression. It won't make you less anxious. But you know what, bud? There is more than one road to happiness and this particular road you're on right now? It really, really isn't for you just yet."
Obviously, that never happened. Past-Becca responded, when it was her turn, with forced conviction. "I'm going to Ball State to become an English teacher."
And Rick Weinheimer grew pensive and said, "Becca, you are way too smart to be an English teacher."
And the doubt grew!
But she packed her boxes and went straight to college and did well, then less well, then floundered, then dropped a major and few classes, then made up two dead relatives and multiple food poisonings to avoid leaving her dorm room, then cut herself multiple times with a sharp edge, and then, after a dizzying visit to the ER, came back home.
She — well, I finished college eventually. I have a house, a full time job, and absolutely the greatest husband ever. My cat is a national treasure. I'm not saying that things are bad right now, or that I desperately wish my life were different. I like my life and I like being alive to live it.
But I won't pretend not to wonder, as many grown-ups do, if it would have been better the other way. Or not better, per say, but maybe it would have hurt less. Maybe I would have spent fewer nights crying and more nights looking up at the sky.
It is my genuine hope, then, that the next generation of plucky youngsters can read this and hear someone well entrenched in adulthood assure them...
"Don't go until you're ready. Go out and live a little. Can't paint the world if you don't know your colors, right? Plus, be real. It's super f***ing expensive."
