Little did I know, the 20's were nothing like that.
To paint this picture clearly, I digress for a moment... My experience of "getting into trouble" as a teenager was that there was always my parents or some adult there to "pick up the pieces" per say, or at the very least, be that towering reminder of strength and reassurance that it was all going to be okay, even if I couldn't see it at the time. It didn't mean that life was just taken care of always, but it was more of the, "well she's just a teenager so we understand" and "we'll fix it this time." I guess to capture it concisely, there was protective compassion highly present in my teen years. As if adults were always there to watch over you and "help you up on your Bambi legs."
Fast forward to the mid-twenties I had so looked forward to, only to find myself (more times than I'm comfortable remembering) with the rug pulled out from underneath me, wondering what the heck had just hit me. I soon learnt that it was called change, and the one thing that was guaranteed to happen all through my 20's was change. Except this time I looked around grasping for someones helping hand to make each magnanimous shift a little less harsh and the response was different. Its not that the mentors I had previously leaned on were less compassionate or less understanding, but there was this kick in the pants that said, "this is life, so deal with it, your 20 now after all." Maybe it was the reality of adulthood hitting, I'm still not quite sure. But this completely trumped my ideology that things were easier when you were 20, or that you had less people to answer to. The opposite was actually true and it was called responsibility. I had to take care of my own stuff, because no one else was going to.
So all the familiar turmoil from my teens still applied, "who am I, who am I really, what's my life purpose, what makes me happy, what is happiness, what is love, what does love look like, how do you know when you're in love, is this enough, am I doing enough, should I be some place else in my life right now and I'm not, who made up these expectations anyways, what are we all here for, why are people so cruel to each other sometimes, do we really still live in a barbaric time where people still think its acceptable to exercise talk or acts of racism and hate crimes, can I even make a difference anyways?" And slap on top of that, that it was now truly up to me and there was nowhere to hide anymore. If I messed up it was my turn to own it, if I offended someone I had the power to go and make that misunderstanding right, and if someone hurt my feelings it was up to me to articulate with compassion and clarity why that situation didn't work for me.
So in my early 20's, I learnt that each day as an adult is about accepting the change thats going to keep reminding you that there is nothing to control. And just when you think that you've sneakily found a way to guarantee the things in your life (ie. how your boyfriend feels about you and that he'll never change his feelings for you), life pops back a gentle reminder that there are no guarantees. All we ever have to do is to love openly and freely without need for control. The task is to surrender the fear that tries to create control to ensure our survival. That little ego whose ultimate goal is survival sometimes needs to be reminded that there is nothing to survive. Once we give up that notion that we need to control outcomes in order to survive, the ride truly begins.
I remember saying to my sister one day not too long ago, "I want to go to life school" and she simply answered, "I think we're in it." And my oh my was she right.
My sister Megan and I in Nova Scotia, summer 2013.
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