Aug 20, 2018 –
I remember the first week of my freshmen year of high school pretty vividly. It was 2012 and my sequence backpack and bright red pants felt like the appropriate “first day of high school ever” outfit. I left my house feeling okay but when I walked into the big social hallway I felt my heart drop to my stomach.
(This was me the first week of my freshman year… why 🙂 was 🙂 I 🙂 this 🙂 way:)…. just kidding, honestly I still think it was cool of me to go all out for football games )
That hallway’s tendencies were to house everyone in the morning.. like EVERYONE. Upper class-men, scared freshmen, the occasional security guard- you know the hallway.
This particular hallway felt like a runway. It had an entrance from the parking lot and often times the walls were so crowded with people that the only way to get through it was to walk right down the middle where everyone could see you.
Typically I am pretty confident but given the situation (ya know.. my first day of high school and all) I wanted to throw away all of my bold clothing and slither across the ground so no one would see me. When I found a friend and a place to stand in the hallway I started to calm down a little bit.
Then I saw them.
The cool older kids. You know the type- rich parents, perfect hair and teeth, athletic, charming, Abercrombie models probably. All I could think was, “So this is the time we bow down to them right?”
You know in TV shows where they choose 25 year olds to play someone who is 17. THATS HOW THESE KIDS LOOKED! I was in awe… like they looked SO OLD! Beautiful, but there was NO WAY they were only a few years older than me!
As the year went by I would look at them and think, “Holy cow, they have it all figured out! They’re so grown up and have the perfect life!” Those Seniors convinced me that in the next 4 years I was going to not only graduate with my high school diploma but also with a rockin’ bod, mega intelligence of everything ever, perfect clothes and probably a boyfriend who would go to college with me and then we would own a Bugatti and live in a beach house with 10 perfect little sun kissed beach babies.
Fast forward to 2016.
You can imagine the distress I felt when I became “that” senior and didn’t have… well…. any of it. I HAD NO IDEA WHAT I WAS GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE! (I mean.. to be fair I still don’t. Some things never change! Haha)
I’d see my friends grow up into these incredible little geniuses who were pretty, smart and good at talking to people. I felt like I missed the memo where we suddenly all became okay with talking to adults on the phone! Im still scared of that! I can distinctly remember a day where I sat in my AP lit class and started crying because I couldn’t figure “it” out. “It” meaning life… not an assignment haha honestly its a miracle I passed that class. I can probably remember it so well because it happened basically every week! IM EMOTIONAL OKAY.
One by one my class mates started announcing where they were going to go to college, what they wanted to major in and I was internally screaming.
This meme explained me:
Although this stuff all stressed me the heck out, I truly am an optimist and believes that everything will always work out.. which is does! SOOOO, I said a prayer, listened hard and went with what my gut told me to do. (You hear that?… I didn’t have any divine inspiration as to what I was supposed to do.. I made a plan, asked if it was right and got all nauseous in my stomach. Over the years I’ve come to learn that this is my green light signal for “Its gonna be scary and you’re gonna grow but you gotta do it.. this is PROBABLY right”. )
I got into college, signed my apartment lease and registered for all of my classes. Suddenly I found my self just doing “the next step” day after day. None of it felt crazy, it just felt like Tuesday. Little did I know, THIS was what it felt like to “grow up”.
I met a boy all while this was happening. This felt different but also normal. I got butterflies when I would see him but also felt like I was with an old friend I had known for years.
Fast Forward to 2018.
I survived college, I’m married, I own my own business, I’m raising a puppy (you thought I was gonna say baby huh.. haha WRONG!)
I think I am an adult now.
(Can you hear the actual grown ups laughing at my simple little life that I think is super hectic right now?)
I remembered those perfect seniors I idolized when I was a freshman and facebooked stalked them back to when it was 2013. When I saw a picture of them I burst out laughing because I couldn’t figure out what I thought was so great about them? THEY LOOKED LIKE BABIES!
Braces, emo hair and WAY too much eyeliner. THESE were the people who I was comparing myself to????
It was obvious that they didn’t know what they were doing… so WHY was I so concerned that I needed to “have it figured out” and be like them????
Since then (against my will.. but also not against my will because I guess I can control it but subconscious Sarah is a real stinker sometimes) I found a new group of people to idolize.
HELLO INSTAGRAM!
(This next part may sound like I’m bashing social media and I’m not, I love it!!! Like I’m not against it, I’m being 100% honest)
Social media is cool because you can keep in touch with people and also meet new people.
Its been exciting watching people I knew when I was younger grow up and be awesome (that sounds snarky but I actually mean it). I’d see them kill it at college, go on awesome vacations and have all these amazing experiences.
I started to feel bad about myself and think “I need to enroll back in school” (oh yeah, surprise if you didn’t know- I am taking a break from college… maybe permanently, maybe not, I am not sure hahah ) anyways! I thought that I was a loser and good for nothing because I am not in college and all my friends are so I MUST be doing it wrong!!!
Then it dawned on me.
W R O N G
Did I just think I was doing “it” wrong???
“IT” MEANING LIFE?!
Whoa. Full circle.
Then I laughed.
SINCE WHEN WAS THERE A RULE ON HOW TO LIVE LIFE???
Like seriously, think about it. There is no class anywhere called “how to live life 101”.
Its kinda all up to you. And figuring it out is also UP TO YOU!
Tricky huh?
I mean.. theres google and youtube…which are AWESOME! Don’t worry, Im not throwing shade at them by any means! Honestly they are probably the only reason Ive made it this far tbh.
BUT the people who created the content for that stuff also had to learn it somewhere? And the people who taught it had to learn it somewhere? DO YOU NOT SEE THIS RIPPLE AFFECT!
We keep learning stuff from other people but eventually the first person had to just make it up!
Guess what??? THEY PROBABLY HAD NO IDEA WHAT THEY WERE DOING!
That, my friends, is the secret to adult hood. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THEY’RE DOING.
Like really!!
We all have no clue! We can’t all be experts at everything all the time!
LIFE has a lot of the “everything”!
Which means theres gonna be a lot of time where you wont know how to do stuff! Sure, there will be a few areas of life that you know what your doing but odds are about 80% the time you are just winging it!
….. isn’t that kind of… comforting?
The people that you look at and think “wow they know everything and have everything and are everything” are thinking “oh my gosh, I can’t remember how to add the numbers when they are stacked up on each other! Do I carry the 1? Am I an idiot? Also I have $6.”
This is life. This is what I was scared of for so long hahahahah.
We all feel a little insecure sometimes.
We all freak out a little when its our turn to order food at a new restaurant.
But we just have to remember, no one has it all figured out.
There is no right way to live YOUR life.
Plan what you can, be a good person, work hard and it will all work out.
I know it will.
