I can't wait to grow up

Random thoughts about aging.

I’ve been thinking about aging a lot lately. I mean, I think most of us have as we’re going through life it’s not really something to easily ignore. And weirdly, I’ve been pretty excited about getting older. As an aside, this is not to ignore the way society views aging, especially aging women, but this is my thought process on how I’m feeling about navigating life in my 20’s. I guess in some ways, I don’t feel like I’m getting older quite yet, I’m just getting closer to enjoying my youth.

To back it up, most of the reason why I feel this way is because I spent a lot of my adolescence really not enjoying life. When I was younger, like in middle and high school, I spent so much time being angry and sad. It felt like so much of the world was out of my control (and it still is), I was always under pressure, and I didn’t have the tools to lift myself out of this mindset. Even early adulthood I wasn’t able to enjoy in the ways I wished I could’ve. A lot of times when I think about my youth, it’s inseparable from strong feelings of anxiety, depression, and angst. 

There was a bit of a breaking point moment I felt a few months ago when I opened my high school diary, read some entries, and realized I was such an asshole when I was 17. I didn’t know how to handle this feeling for a while — I became worried that my personality was just asshole, that I was a bad person, and I couldn’t get rid of who I used to be. But who didn’t suck when they were in high school? Part of being a teenager is that you don’t know who you are, you don’t fully understand how to properly express yourself, and your hormones are all a complete mess. And that’s okay, that’s a part of living and learning from your experiences. We’re only human, after all. We will make mistakes, we will feel guilt, we will get better. 

But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more independent, and I’ve been empowered to find my way out of the mess I was previously in. Every year it’s like I can feel my frontal cortex developing, I feel my decision making improving, and I feel myself becoming more of the person I want to be. Being a teenager doesn’t give you that benefit. I used to think that emotions and feelings were meant to be ruled with an iron fist. But of course, I would constantly be at war with myself for not being able to control all of my emotions. As I’m getting older, I’m realizing that personality is not something that you can decide, but something you have to learn and uncover about yourself. That’s partly why I’ve been enjoying my solitude so much -- I’m learning things about myself that I have previously ignored or found unworthy of attention and exploration.

There are a lot of things I regret missing out on when I was a teenager, and there are things I regret missing out on when I was in college. But I’m getting older and better. It’s so much easier for me to forgive myself, and give myself the time and patience I need to grow. I’m not perfect and I will always be far from perfect, but part of growing up has been being able to accept that. Weirdly, there’s even times where I’m looking forward to being even older than I am now when I’ll have even more peace and stability than I currently do. 

I know not everyone has the same feelings about aging, and most people didn’t have the same adolescent experience that I did so this is not meant to be prescriptive in any way. But for now, I’ll enjoy my life as it is. I’ll still continue to make mistakes, I’ll still continue to stress about the big life decisions that come with getting older, but I’m going to enjoy the present as it is and embrace my aging brain.