When I started college, I had life meticulously mapped out. I was going to graduate at 21, move out, have a great job right away, get married within a few years (boyfriend permitting), and start a family by 27. This obviously didn't happen…Not even close. The progression of my life through my early twenties has not been a straight line towards success, but rather a sinuous squiggle moving in all directions towards an ever-changing idea of what my life should be.
I've changed my major several times and taken semesters off for both sickness and play which, at first, made me feel like I was committing a horrific crime. The standard model for success in my hometown was to pick a major, finish school ASAP, and get the best job you could immediately. When I noticed that I was starting to stray from this cookie-cutter equation, as everyone around me pushed forward, I beat myself up and began questioning my drive, my intelligence, and myself as a person. It didn't help that others in my life followed suit. I started watching the timeline and blueprint of my future slip away and get pushed further back by things I both could, and couldn't control.
One night during my sophomore year of college, my mom sat in an empty bathtub trying to console a very inconsolable me stationed on our bathroom floor. I had just decided to take a semester off at the same time I was having a tumor removed from my breast and I was in a panic. I was suddenly no longer finishing school on time, no longer walking at graduation with my friends, and was putting life on hold for four more months. Did I mention I was also having a tumor removed? Cue days worth of ugly crying.
"You will finish school when you're supposed to finish school," she said. "You will be ready and you will be healthy. Everyone's timeline is different. Trust yourself.
Thank God my mom is a crisis counselor.
I had grown attached to the idea that my life was supposed to pan out a certain way, and when that was no longer happening, my anxiety grew to an all-time high. One semester off became two semesters off. A psych major became a business major which then became a communications major, a nursing major, a pre-physician assistant major. One surgery led to two more. Strangers became friends, friends became strangers, and I became a jumble of worry clad with bitten nails, chronic nausea and weak legs. I ached for a clear path to my future, without any obstacles or rugs pulled from my feet.
It took a fair number of these melodramatic bathroom sessions before "trusting the timing of my life" was something I truly believed in. Holding myself up in comparison to where my peers were was killing me. I felt as though I was doing something wrong by not being in the same place. Once I embraced the truth that my life didn't need to, and wasn't going to, look like society's traditional plan, I freed myself. I accepted that my journey was full of bumps and turns and nontraditional college time. That was okay.
When you don't have a set blueprint of what life needs to look like, you free yourself up to make life what you want it to look like.
In the few years that I "should've been" a full-time college student, studying abroad, going on Spring Break trips, and graduating, I lived a lot more life that I would have if my timing panned out the way I planned. I became a nationally ranked and world recognized ballroom dancer. I traveled the country competing and visiting loved ones whenever I wanted. I ultimately found a career I love. I got a job that I love. My anxiety chilled the f*** out and so did I. I seized opportunities as they came; ones that may not have come otherwise.
I promise you, all of the unexpected turbulence you will face along the way, will teach you how to handle situations you cannot control, head on; which is a pretty valuable life skill. Don't know what you want to be for the rest of your life? Suddenly hate your major? Got unexpectedly let go from your job? Tumor in your lady parts? March on, soldier! The only way to go is onward.
Things come up and that's inevitable. We change our minds because we're fickle beings and that's normal. It's okay to be scared, to be frustrated. It's okay if the winds in your ocean changed and have thrown you off course. Breathe deeply often. Meditate and keep your mind open. Or jam to your favorite music, down a coffee, and tell yourself everything will be fine. Life is full of surprises, and we are surprisingly good at adapting to them as long as we allow ourselves to be.
If there's one thing I learned above all else, it's that the world doesn't end just because life doesn't happen the way we thought it would. Sometimes, it even gets a lot better.
