adulting
it's 2 a.m. and i'm afraid of change
prelude
about three months ago i decided to get out of my obscurity period (read: mysterious girl era) on Instagram as I just had to commemorate the fact that I had submitted my final year thesis, not that I wanted some sort of acknowledgment for it, but to simply put it out there for my own sense of satisfaction. as soon as I did that, a few days later, I went back to archiving all of my posts including the one I just did. the first few days of realizing my student life had finally slipped away were rather, I don’t know, ambivalent. i was happy, of course. excited, even more. as the caption of my post reads: can’t wait to see what life has in store for me! such optimism deserves applause, though my vision for the future is indeed, vague. then it finally hit me. am I finally diving head-first into adulthood?
one thing I am utmost certain about myself when I was a child is that I have always been one who was very eager to grow up. to become an adult. what the hell? what was I thinking? right, perhaps I wasn’t. as a person with a memory span of a fish, I vividly remember watching an episode of Spongebob where he decides to act more grown-up around his grandmother. the grandmother then gifts spongebob with office supplies and stationery, while Patrick receives a classic, granny-style hand-stitched sweater. i remember questioning why spongebob was so unhappy with his gift. why would he be upset when he got all those cool office supplies; staplers, punchers, a bunch of pens? i loved and wanted those so bad. am I acoustic? i also remembered talking to myself when I was I child, I wanted to grow up so much so that I could drive myself and go anywhere I wanted without asking for anyone’s permission. no, I wasn’t locked up as a child. my childhood was perfect. this was all TV. i must confess, as a child, I profusely consumed the movie 13 Going on 30 and it influenced me up until this day. I wanted to be Jenna Rink. I wanted to dress like Jenna Rink. I wanted to have a cool job like Jenna Rink. I wanted to be thirty, flirty, and thriving. I wanted to have a closet full of colourful clothes and wear my makeup like Jenna Rink. I still do. that’s the thing about me. i get most of my personality from TV shows.
it seems that this quickly turned out to be a reminiscence of my utmost favorite movie. anyway, to think that I even wanted to be an adult. how am I supposed to do this? are you saying that i’m finally on my own now? that my future completely depends on ME? do you have any idea how dangerous that is? i’m the most unreliable person to ever walk this earth. i’m fickle as hell, and I just realized that recently. i have so many desires. so many things to cross on my to-do and bucket list. so many things to become.
i’m an English major, but I don’t know if I want to be an English teacher. my students gave me handwritten notes before I left their school, and it’s the only thing that drives me to want to work as a teacher. i also want to be a writer. probably a journalist too. i want to write for a magazine. but who buys prints these days? or am I just ignorant? i’m never forgetting the ultimate dream of almost every woman in the world; owning a florist. that’s the thing, i’m constantly trying my best to figure out who i am and who i want to be. being fickle as i am, that’s not going to be easy. so i’m scared. i’m so scared of change. but I do believe if we can’t beat the fear, we just have to do it scared.
“We all have this illusion that we are in control. i wanted to play pro football, some guy takes my knee out. I graduate from school, I want to drive my motorcycle across the country and some suit pulls my draft number. I work my ass off to send my daughter to college and some juggler knocks her up.
All I’m saying is, things are always going to change and you have to deal with it. But the good news is, 5 years from now, when you are playing with your grandkids, you won’t even remember today.” - Jay Prichett, Modern Family
it may seem irrelevant (or is it?) but Jay Prichett said something wise here that’s worth noting.
yours truly, Sarah
i so wanna work in a magazine or in a cool publishing house and be a writer. but “who even buys print anymore” is something that forever haunts me
the most wholesome thing i read today- thank u sarah