Growing Pains

What is it about growing up makes me feel like I'm losing my sense of self?

I feel this strange combination of sadness and happiness both at once, and I don’t quite know how to explain it. It is bittersweet. It is the happiness of gratitude alongside the sadness of a nagging nostalgia. It is a longing for my childhood and for more carefree times, or at least what I remember as being carefree times.
  Youth really is wasted on the young.

Mini-me in an era of carefree
times & unappreciated freedom

  Growing up, I was worried about being too sheltered and not getting the freedom I thought I so rightly deserved. I felt the pangs of adolescence and trying to fit in, and trying to stand up for what I believed in without being disliked. I wanted so badly to be liked, to be ‘cool’. Maybe those teenage years weren’t the easiest of times either. 

But looking back, I don’t remember those struggles, but I instead remember the freedom of having free time and having room in my life to breathe. I remember reading for hours on end and being on vacation with my family. I remember journalling and listening to the radio. I remember looking forward to school and being extremely motivated to succeed. I remember exercising, and training, and enjoying the soreness of my muscles after a hard workout. And the thrill of competition and the strange safety of being stuck at the stadium all day - because track meets always started and finished late - but not really feeling stuck because I enjoyed the long, drawn-out hours of preparation. A chance to dive into my thoughts. To settle my emotions and prepare for the inevitable rush of nerves right before a race. And I remember the feeling afterwards, of accomplishment, of doing my best, of pushing my body to the limit.

Now, I barely find the time to break a sweat. Was I more disciplined back then? Or was it just easier? Or did I simply have more time?

It saddens me to think that nowadays I feel like I don't have the time to live the balanced, healthy lifestyle that I so desire.

Back then, I crafted. I scrap-booked. I cut and pasted magazine snippets into my art journal and poured my thoughts out onto pages and pages of diary entries. 

I spent enough time alone and in my thoughts to be able to process and ponder my life.

I miss being able to do that, and I miss the person I was.

Form 3 mini-me spreadin' da love...was I
more optimistic back then?*

I don’t know if I was actually more optimistic then, or maybe there were more things to be optimistic about. I’d like to know when I started feeling things so deeply, or when my feelings started feeling so un-resolvable - feelings I cannot come to terms with, this constant, nagging dissatisfaction with myself that I don’t know how to remedy. Maybe back then there just weren’t as many things to feel deeply about. Or I felt things just as much but was better able to deal with them. What is it about growing up that makes me feel like I’m losing my sense of self?

Maybe I am not actually losing my sense of self. Maybe I am finding myself, bit by bit, piece by piece, but in order to find myself I have to lose a lot of the old pieces of me. Maybe I have outgrown parts of myself and need to shed that old skin to enter into who I’m meant to be.

 I read somewhere recently that God breaks us down in order to build us back up. That is what it feels like; I am being broken down into my constituent parts. My talents and flaws, strengths and weaknesses, skills and insecurities, these long-embedded pieces of me…they are rising to the surface, and are laid out before me like pieces of a puzzle, painting a not-so-pretty picture, but it’s time to pick and choose the pieces I leave behind and the ones to carry with me.

Maybe this is not the first difficult transition into myself that I will endure. Maybe life continues to change you so that you’re never quite who you want to be, but always changing out of the old and into the new and striving to be who you wish to be. 

It’s a lot to think about. I’m not quite sure I’ve gotten the hang of this ‘growing up’ thing yet. 

I am constantly trying to improve myself while simultaneously trying to be the best that I can be. Maybe those two are not mutually exclusive?

I want to be doing my best, but feel like I’m constantly falling short. But it is always on my mind, it is always my goal, and maybe the fact that I am constantly striving to be my best means that I am being my best self? I’d like to think so.

I’m reminiscing about the past, and pondering the present, but naturally I’m thinking about my future, too. And what I’m going to do with my life. And wondering if I have it in me to work hard towards achieving my dreams, when I am already so tired and drained from uni-life.

Since when did I become so insecure and doubtful of my abilities? I lived my entire life believing that I would do my best at whatever I attempted, and that I’d be successful in the end. But now I am having a hard time even defining success or figuring out what it is I want to work hard at. Or wondering if I’m good enough to ‘make it’ in the world. Stanford is making me feel like the bottom of the barrel. I wonder what about me stands out that would make employers want to hire me over anyone else. Little me, who is now learning to take baby steps outside her comfort zone. Little me, who feels the burden of growth and its accompanying failures as sharply as though they were broken bones mending beneath my skin. Little me who loves routine so much that the constant changes of college are curveballs that I’m barely managing to avoid. In fact, I am not avoiding them. They are hitting me straight in the face and forcing me to come to terms with who I am.

Little me who is still a perfectionist, and still wants to get everything right. Every. Single. Thing. As if I could control every aspect of my life. Little me who doubts even the smallest things that she does. Who’d rather be explicitly instructed on what to do than decide on my own and make a mistake.

I know right about now my mom would tell me to change my language. I should stop saying ‘little me’. I am not little, I am grand! I am going to do great things in this world. I am going to change lives. Even if it is just the lives of those immediately around me. This is what I’ve always believed, and what I need to remind myself of now more than ever.

I suppose I am just stuck in this super-transitional phase, and I’m finally learning that it is okay to feel things. I do not have to have nerves of steel 24/7. It’s okay to be unsure, or afraid. In fact, pushing forward despite these feelings is real strength, isn’t it?

It just bothers me that I miss the person I was growing up.

Do I want to go back in time? Not really. Rather, sometimes I wish  to skip these transitional years and fast-forward to the older, surer, more settled version of myself. The older-me who has a family, and a career, and stability, blessed stability. But I stop these thoughts in their tracks - I know it is better to live in the moment, to be present. Later, I would probably look back at these college years and wish for the freedom I have now.

Ah, youth is truly wasted on the young.

I think the difficulty is simply that I see the person I want to be - this balanced, well-rounded, healthy individual living to her fullest potential and positively impacting the world around her - but she has not yet emerged. I don’t want to just be, I want to become.

But maybe it’s time for me to see the beauty in the becoming, and all the imperfections and mistakes that come along with it.

*PC to Christina S for this pic