Basic adulting

 I dyed my hair a very silly colour of red today and laughed with my sister about it. On getting a very good lecture from mom we tried to make a statement about how being an adult is about making mistakes and figuring things out on your own. A little while later my sister casually says, “I feel like it’s about losing the things and people I love over and over again and still have to be strong about it.” She’s usually wrong but today she was right in a way that it stung a little. 

I have never known loss like I have in the last two years. For an entirety of most part of my life I’ve walked around not grieving loss. I thought it made me cooler, bold, a woman who wasn’t a crybaby about losing people. I was wrong. My life barely had any emotions to it. I was running around finding distractions. Distractions that made me feel whole for when I didn’t want to face the realities of life. I grew. I could blame it on the excess of female hormones in my body and go on to live a cold, emotionally shallow life again but my life took a little bit of turn on a random wednesday. I learned to love a little more, and the ones I already did love, I learned to express a little more. From losing the comfort of home, the ability to see my comfort people on a daily basis to losing people I wanted to hold on so tight to, it’s been a funny ride.

The riches of money which is the prime goal for my 20s is a path I have barely just started working on but everyday I grow closer to an emotionally rich life. I laugh with one of my closest friend how we are doing it as a sense of achievement because career wise we still have such a long way to go but at the end of the day we both agree on how leaving behind our cool girl strong women aesthetic who barely feel any emotions to learn empathy, to expand our capacity to love, to feel is a greater achievement than all the medals on our walls.

I used to think I’d get better at it as an adult but it just gets messier. I thought adulting was handling it better but turns out it is about hiding it better. I miss the days when I was 12 years old handing a forever bracelet to my friends. Some of those I still talk to every other day, some I haven’t heard from in years. Turns out every person you love doesn’t come with a guarantee that they will be there forever like my 12 year self used to think it would. 

To have lost is to have loved and as much as it hurts I think that is how you grow. The reflections of your past are stairs to a better life. Some losses can cripple you emotionally. Some losses can feel like being stabbed by a knife over and over with no first aid, with no one to blame because you were the one holding the knife. 

I have fought with people I wanted to fight for. I’ve lost the once I loved the most because of the weight of love I put on them. Love isn’t a responsibility but rather a choice and there’s still days I need to recognize that. I want to think my love wasn’t lacking, it was just stifling. I’ve lost people who loved me with so much of their heart just because I wasn’t mature to handle it then. Now I love without expectations and allow myself to be loved with as much as they can. I Wish all the people I love the best even though I might have hurt them or been bitter when I’ve been hurt. I’ve had to deal with the reality that not all you love is going to be as wholesome. I think being an adult is coming to terms with the fact that you’re gonna get hurt and also hurt people (I think I heard Taylor swift say the same thing for her graduation speech). I think being an adult is going through phases where you will find people who will care about you selflessly while also getting disappointed by people who will abandon you because you don’t match their convenience. Adulting is about the dreadful mornings where mom’s not there everyday to pull your curtains and make sure you eat enough breakfast while you are running late for school. 

There are days you are going to be walking on eggshells scared that people are going to walk out on you leaving you shattered because your shadows turned out darker than their own. They probably will but it will barely matter when you learn to hold your own shadows. Being an adult is sometimes about having lost so much that you are willing to go to any length to keep the ones who are still there. There will be days you give so much of you for so less of them. But I think that’s the bravest thing one could ever do. To have stretched your heart to hold people and take the risk of being left empty is the strongest one can ever be. Being an adult is about holding the strength to live with that loss, to grow from it and feel whole again. So far I’ve barely survived as an adult. Some days it is so heavy I wish I could snap out of it, run away to somewhere where no one knows me. On other days, I’m surrounded by so much love that I’m filled with gratitude for every tiny blessing in my life. To me being an adult is about learning to let go of what wasn’t meant for me while trying to be a better person for the ones who are. 

-nush