Hi everyone !
Youth. A word I’ve been thinking about a lot these days. I just turned 19 a week ago. And ever since my past and future have become a great source of doubt.
Birthdays are real fuel for existential crises aren’t they ? They always make you reflect on who you are or have become. Mine felt strange, like everyone expected me to be someone I wasn’t or to feel different than before. Birthdays are meant to celebrate the ways you’ve changed, all the experience gained, right ? Well in my case, I wonder what is there to celebrate, since I haven’t truly learned anything. I’ve aged, but I haven’t grown up.
I am at that stage of life where I don’t feel like a kid anymore but also not quite adult yet. How am I supposed to live through this fog and know where I’m headed ? For someone who claims to want to be independent, my responsibilities now feel incredibly heavy to carry. It all hits even harder when you feel like you haven’t lived your teenage years either. Where was I, when people my age made friends or hung out in the streets ? Where was I, when they danced through the night or met their first love ? I was curled up in a corner, waiting for it to end. I haven’t lived at all, my heart has never felt crushing heartbreak nor ecstatic happiness. It’s still painfully new, desperate to get roughed up.
When does one stop growing up and start growing old ? No one told me life was going to get more and more lonely as it goes. This is the kind of stuff nobody talks about, how do we manage all these changes ? We’re expected to be this whole other person who suddenly makes perfect choices and whose identity is fully constructed. But the truth is we’re always growing up, always trying to figure it out. I’ve seen people over 50 suddenly turning their life over, for the better but also for the worse, as if they suddenly realized some truth they missed about their existence.
Feeling empty is way worse than feeling hurt. I wish I had never avoided people, I wish I had said yes more often than I said no, because it was all so short. Being hurt means you’ve lived through it. That you’ve taken opportunities, made mistakes. I’ve made the worse mistake I could have made: I’ve let my own youth pass me by and disappear. And it will leave a hole in my identity that time will never fill because you only live your young years once. Now, I can still be happy, change for the better overnight, but I’ll always have the bitter certitude of having missed a special time period of my life.
I guess regrets can be useful after all, I’ll never forget all that fear has made me miss. I just wish I had been a little bolder. You only have one youth, don’t miss it.
That’s it for this article, thanks for reading !
See you next Monday -Sophie
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