Twenty-three

I’ve spent a lot of time not feeling my age. Sometimes feeling too old and sometimes too young. But something in the last year has changed. I still experience the too young versions of me and the too old versions of me, sporatically all the time, and yet more and more I feel I am precisely my age. Teenage me would consider this a revelation. Current, twenty-three year old me sees it as one of those curses that could ultimately be a gift if I muster the wherewithal to embrace it.

So far, twenty-three has been defined by several poingant new states of being. For example:

• I feel nostalgia and longing for the past, but don’t want to repeat it.
• I am truly scared of the future, but catch myself being excited about the possibilities it holds.
• I have the most confidence I’ve ever had while constantly second-guessing and feeling like I’m disappointing.
• I am incredibly impatient for things to happen now, and I wish the world would quiet down and let me sit quietly.
• I feel young and like time is running out.
• I am driven toward independence, but don’t want to let go of my people and my home.
• I love being silly and excited and want to be taken seriously
• I don’t want to be told what to do, and I would really love it if someone just told me what to do.
• I want things I can’t have and don’t want the things that I “should”.
• I know what I want from life, and I really don’t know what I want from life.

Mostly, I just have so many feelings now. Where did they all come from? I suspect my heart is taking its turn in the lime light after living in my brain’s shadow for so many years in school. The feelings like to jumble and tangle and meld and multiply. I often don’t know what to do with them; sometimes I can pick them apart and sort them into their appropriate containers, other times I just wait for the about-to-burst sensation to pass. The diametrically opposed ones that I feel strongly and simultaneouly are the hardest.

Does this sound like twenty-three? I suppose I don’t have an objective perspective, but I think so. Though it is also distinctly possible I’ve just hit my teenage years.

As much as I’ve rolled my eyes at myself in the last few months, I’m grateful for the privelege of being a twenty-something “just figuring things out right now”. I hate it a lot of the time, but I’m grateful nonetheless. Because with all the weirdly fluffy-looking tufts of angst that have been floating by, there have been an increasing number of twinkling life sparkles shimmering all around me. And I really really really like the life sparkles, more than I ever would have expected.