When I was little, all I really wanted was to grow up. Being the youngest person in my family, I spent a lot of time around adults and thought that all it took was a job and an apartment in the city.
But in reality, growing up is really, really hard. It's like being dropped in the middle of a desert, fully equipped with enough food and water to stay alive, but with no sense of direction whatsoever. You just have no idea where you're going. Ever. But you just keep walking, and hope it works out somehow.
Learning to be independent is definitely a struggle, but to me, the hardest part of growing up is the inevitable reality that you will make mistakes. But unlike when you were a kid, you have to face them and deal with their consequences. Your parents can't fix them, and for the first time you're fully responsible for every decision that you've made. And that's terrifying.
I know it sounds cliche, but everyone makes mistakes. Sometimes your mistakes will be big, and sometimes they'll be small. Sometimes, you'll make people mad at you. And you'll realize that you have the capability to hurt others, and that's just not a good feeling.
But mistakes are only mistakes if you don't learn from them.
Maybe it's because I'm the kind of person who finds silver linings to everything difficult, but the hardest thing about growing up has also been the most rewarding. When you're forced to own the decisions you've made, it really helps you reflect and grow as a person. You get to decide who you want to be and how the world perceives you for the very first time in your life.
It's at my worst that I decide to try to be my best. Never have I been more motivated than in my bed in sweatpants crying about something stupid I did. It's really easy to beat yourself up about little things, but in reality life is a long road. You hit one speed bump, but in the grand scheme of life it probably won't even matter eventually.
I think that my hope in writing this weird, rambling article is that some collegiate will click and know that they're not alone in winging growing up. It's easy to feel like you're alone in struggling to decide who you want to be and how you need to get there, but everyone hits those inevitable speed bumps. It's how we move past them that counts. Sometimes we need to pull the car over and take a few minutes to make sure everything is okay, and others we just keep driving like nothing happened. Regardless, all that matters is that we keep looking ahead and learn from all the bumps in the road behind us, never looking back.
