To be a college student is to overthink. To be nineteen is to worry. To be female is to romanticize.
When the nature of the world suddenly becomes a question of debate, she reaches out to desperately grab hold of something concrete and finds nothing within her grasp.
The relationships she hopes will last, she hypothesizes losing. The “friends” she makes, she wonders how true their title rings—does she care for them more than they care for her? Are these relationships forged by proximity or convenience? Do they think of her when she isn’t with them? Are these the people she’ll one day tell her kids about?
Quelling the countless thoughts in her head, she smiles, she talks, and she acts like such suspicions don’t exist at all. She wears the mask that so many have worn before her and walks through life determined to eventually make her practiced facade an internalized reality.
She works, she studies, and she wonders if this will amount to anything at all. Teetering on the edge of twenty, she feels a sense of urgency to accomplish something—anything. She watches as the sun sets and rises, counting down the days of her teenage years. Almost two decades, and she’s failed to change the world. She compares herself to her peers and feels an intense inadequacy. She desires to prove herself but doesn’t know how to. She wishes for success, but even more, she wishes for the exalted status and sense of worth that comes from the overlap of adolescence and accomplishment. Soon, she’ll be twenty and no longer able to fall back on her teenage years. No longer just a teenage girl, she will have to face the world bearing a whole new set of expectations. And yet, at the same time, she’s also keenly aware of the vibrancy and promise of possibility that her age grants her.
She walks through life with a tenacity that only youth can harness and soaks up the world around her. She is aware that anything is possible, fueled by the arguably misplaced confidence that everything will work out. For though she felt old, she knew deep down that she was young. She takes pleasure in her naivety and relishes her cherished rose-colored glasses. This was a time to explore, to travel, to love, and to live. She dances through the courtyard as if in a music video, smiles at everyone she sees, convinces herself that someone out there is in love with her, studies as if she were about to stumble onto some great epiphany, and takes every turn in the hopes it’ll lead somewhere new.
Her world is an incomplete sketch —an image just begun. For to be alive is to be unfinished. To be young is to be unsure. And to be human is to find both joy and fear in that uncertainty.
