Unfortunately for y’all, I don’t have a particularly interesting intro prepared for this newsletter’s inaugural issue, nor any brilliantly original musings on how to begin a beginning. I love beginnings, but when it comes to the words I communicate I tend to put an unnecessary pressure on myself to start strong, and create the best hook ever written (not my strong suit anyway). It is only through introspection and much begrudging drafting that I know this, but I’m going to ignore those revelations for today. Let’s begin!
Above: the bookstore tucked away into coastal North Carolina that gave me the nudge to voice these thoughts a couple of weeks ago.
As of the time and date you all will read this issue, I’ll be fully moved into my first college dorm! I’ll be 4 hours away from home, my parents have hit the highway back 27 hours prior, and I’m most likely out of the house with new people. I’m also most likely agonizing over 12 things at once, and agonizing over the best way to prevent that fact from being displayed on my face at all times. Imposter syndrome aside, my thoughts for the last foreseeable year or so have been occupied with the mountainous task of beginning something so significant- a new chapter.
I’m almost certain that time will prove me wrong, but as of now it feels like the hype surrounding major life changes (specifically those teenagers undergo) does more harm than good. I’ve paid attention to the little shifts, the imperceptible things that have made me more “grown up” over the years, none of which include living somewhere new or following a new academic course of study. Despite those modifications to how I move through life or love others as best I can, I still feel the same innately, of course. I still dance around in my room to the same songs I did when I was 14, I still make my grilled cheese sandwiches the same way, I still resent myself for the nagging habits and failures I commit to. All of which begs the question: what is the evidence of coming of age?
The last year has proven to be a grueling test in that field, as I navigated the future blindly and the present absentmindedly. I had been so focused on crafting a new expectation for senior year, for year 16, for college, for everything I could possibly imagine. I lost myself for a bit, and found it, and now I’m losing it a little bit again. Without friends, peers, adults, employers and many more to tell me who I am and will be, I’ve been forced to sit in my room for 2 very short months and wonder open-mouthed. Did my longtime self proclaimed independence and maturity fail me as I could no longer depend on only myself to emotionally progress? Maybe. Does that make me a hypocrite, or just somebody too self aware for their own good who talks themselves into circles for fun? Probably both. If I am growing up and shedding these characteristics as something of the juvenile past, where do my new answers come from? Can’t I just curl up in my closet and dry sob into my sweaters until these feelings pass? Who do I want to be? Do you see what I mean?
Even as I second guess myself and all her veils, I’m present minded enough to return to the things that make me who I am with a fierce certainty. My family, my faith, my movement. Various meditations and patterns once again comfort me with familiarity not as a crutch, but as a base. I slowly start to rebuild, and the cycle of self questioning slows to a halt. Being myself must stand for something, so I put off thinking too hard about the subject until the next time I meet a stranger. Which as of now, is about 48 hours ago.
The need to reinvent, to expect, to imagine has evaded me in periods of depression, fear and lack of inspiration, and all I can do in this season is pray it won’t fail me now. I will probably always cling to my identity as an idealist, a creative, a “writer” if people at school ask. I might even promote the link to this newsletter if I’m feeling brave. But the sweetest notion is the thought of being surrounded by masses of individuals who don’t know about me, or my various phases of being, or my thought processes that circumvent each one. It is a strange comfort in that it provides a blank slate, a new universe. My only job now is to fill it.
P.S. This is what I’m listening to right now to cope with the imminence of growing up! Gross! I love you!