growing pains
When I was a little girl, I used to think 16 was the perfect age. Not only is this a pretty, even number, but sixteen-year-olds have cell phones and boyfriends. They carry purses and wear low-rise jeans. It was the oldest age I could imagine myself being. It was peak maturity.
I just turned twenty, and I’m trying my best to cope.
I used to want to age so badly. I hated my braces and the fat on my face. Now I’m turning twenty and feel deep down that I wasted my childhood. There are six-year-olds that can code and eighteen-year-olds saving lives. I’m twenty, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I don’t want to sound bitter but sometimes opening social media to see another story about a thirteen year old that has gotten into college or a young actress that just had the role of a lifetime makes me want to throw my phone out the window.
Twenty seems like a space caught between two extremes. There is the side that is the kid in college. Don’t waste your time to have fun. Go out every weekend and drink yourself to sickness just because you can. Even if you don’t want to, you should do it because it’s what college students do, and you won’t be young enough to get away with it forever. Soon you will have a real job and people that rely on you. It’s also the time to focus and figure out what you’ll do with the rest of your life. Go to all of your classes and get the highest grades possible so you can get into your post grad program. Join clubs to set you apart because a high GPA won’t be good enough. Have leadership positions because you have to fill that resume somehow. Also, you should probably get a job because living on a campus isn’t cheap.
If the expectations of being older aren’t enough to crush you, there are also the beauty expectations of beauty for women of all ages. None of this is helped by the fact that my tiktok is pushing anti-aging straws and miracle creams to prevent wrinkles. Twenty-year-old girls are selling LED masks that will prevent the look of aging on apps that are targeted at an even younger demographic.
Not only is everything about being an aging woman difficult, it is also hard getting used to birthdays in college. Your parents, the people who were there for every birthday before, aren’t there. It’s not like high school when enough people knew that you would get stopped in the hallway with happy birthdays. Now, it feels lonely to sit in a two hundred person lecture where no one even knows your name.
I was prepared to feel the crushing birthday sadness. I was prepared to feel the age on me. I thought I would be filled with overwhelming hatred of womanhood and all of the expectations that only increase as I age.
Instead it was a normal day. I went to my classes and did school work. I had dinner with my friends. We sat around in my living room talking about the dumb things that we can go back and forth about on any day of the week.
Once they left and I was finally alone with my new twenty year old self, I braced myself to feel the walls close in around me. But I felt fine. I was happy. I looked in the mirror and wasn’t met with the old and wrinkled face that I had expected.
Aging will happen. The worst thing that I can do is be anxious about it.
The richest celebrities may get surgeries to make them appear to never age a minute but that doesn’t change the fact that getting older is inevitable. Backs will hurt, and the skin will wrinkle. No amount of lotions or skin care regimes will stop that. In the end, it won’t matter how we look, but what we feel looking back. Instead of worrying about living up to the expectations, look inside and focus on what you want for yourself. When it comes down to it, the only person that’s approval matters is your own.