Living Young and Wild and Free

 

I got bored a week or so ago, so I flat ironed my hair. 

I love it when it gets just long enough for me to straighten because I end up with this fun, flippy ‘do a la Cheryl Burke in the mid-2000s. It brings me joy. 

Anyway, I don’t know if it was the nostalgia or the fact that straight hair instantly takes years off my face, but as I was looking in the mirror straightening my unruly curls, I realized something: I’m YOUNG. Now, this may seem silly to some of you – I’m 25 years old, of course I’m young, but to me, it felt like my eyes had finally opened to my own youth and freedom. 

It’s been quite a journey to come to terms with my phase of life. There have been so many little moments over the past few weeks and months that have been growing in me this sense of youthfulness and joy, reminding me that maybe I’m taking life way too seriously when I should be enjoying this time. 

In some ways, I was born 40. I avoided my peers like the plague as a child and opted instead for errand runs with my parents’ friends. I stopped going to Sunday School when I was six or seven because it felt too juvenile – I wanted to be with the adults learning about the real stuff. To this day, most of my friends are several years, if not decades, older than me. It’s more comfortable that way. 

But, in other ways, I’ve always been a bright-eyed ball of energy who loves nothing more than to laugh and make others do the same despite how immature my amusements may be. I want to have fun and play and explore. I get energy from seeing new things and am totally cool with being entirely irrational from time to time. I’m a dreamer who takes risks for those dreams. 

I want to be more of the second part of me, without compromising the first. 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be older than I am. I remember being maybe 16 or 17 and telling my dad that I just wanted to be 25 because once I’m 25 I will finally be respected as an adult and won’t have to work so hard to prove myself (spoiler alert, it’s not so cut and dry). I’ve even resented my appearance or the way I talk because I’ve felt like my outward youth has poorly represented what I feel inside or what I’m capable of. 

I think part of this is that I’ve always struggled to fit in amongst my peers. My life experience has looked different than others. I haven’t felt the same need for external validation or dealt with the same challenges and insecurities as those in my peer groups. I haven’t needed to experiment because I’ve always known, more or less, who I am and what I stand for. I often feel like I’m viewing the world through an entirely different lens than those my age. It can feel isolating. 

So, to feel seen, I’ve gravitated towards older crowds and have spent a lot of time trying to prove that I belong there. In middle school, for example, I earned the “Volunteer of the Year” award at a local drop-in service center for adults. For the entire summer, I had worked basically full-time alongside my grandmother opening the center and caring for participants. Though I’m grateful for that experience and the opportunity to bond with my grandma, looking back I realize that it’s kind of strange that I got so much gratification from working as a 12- or 13-year-old. I had a full three months away from school to do whatever I wanted, and I chose to work a 9-5. If I missed a day, I felt horrible. If I couldn’t prove myself to be just as capable as the adults, I felt embarrassed. This is too much pressure for a kid, but it’s a pressure that I had created or, at least, unknowingly submitted to. 

That’s just one example – there are probably thousands of others of me trying to prove my worth, meaning prove that I’m a capable and mature adult, in both personal and professional settings. I often haven’t let co-workers or even friends all the way in for fear that if they really knew me and how my youth shows up in my life, they would judge me harshly for it. I hate when people solely equate maturity with age because that has never been my experience.

I’ve committed my life to working and accomplishing and doing all while holding myself to the impossible standard of (adult) perfection. I’ve missed out on a lot of fun, a lot of peace, and a lot of contentment in favor of presenting my wisdom and maturity in such a way that I can be accepted by other adults.

It’s interesting, though I imagine not uncommon, that I’m now at the age I desired to be for so long and yet still don’t feel entirely fulfilled. I’ve checked a lot of boxes (graduate degree, job in my chosen career) and am working towards others (car, house, etc.) but I think along the way I’ve been so caught up in the destination that I’ve missed the ride a little bit.

I told my friend recently that as strange as it may sound, mentally I feel like my life is over because all my goals and hopes and dreams end here. My imagination has always stopped at this point and now I’m here and feel like I still have so much to learn and experience that it is positively freaking me out. I need to remind myself that this isn’t the end; it’s just the beginning. 

During my sophomore year of high school, one of my favorite teachers of all time asked me, “What do you do for fun?” I was sixteen years old and quite literally did not have a response. My life at that time was school, homework, volunteering, family time, sleep, repeat. There wasn’t space for fun. There wasn’t space to enjoy being young. 

I don’t like taking life very seriously, and yet I do. I think of relationships, even. My eyes have always been dead set on marriage and kids. I don’t want to waste my time with frivolous relationships and I’m only going to date if there’s real and immediate potential. That’s still mostly my perspective, but over the last few weeks, I’ve started to learn that I need to lighten up. It’s ok to just be present, enjoy life, and see where the road leads without trying to predict what lies ahead.

I could sit here and psychoanalyze myself until I’m blue in the face, but I won’t. I think the simplest thing is to say that often our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. I’m grateful for how my personality and experiences have allowed me to advance in my life both personally and professionally. I’m so grateful that some of my best friends are decades ahead of me and that we’ve gotten to knock down socially-determined walls and learn from each other. I’m also grateful that I’ve been able to connect more deeply with those younger than me, recognizing that age doesn’t tell the whole story. At the same time, it makes me sad that that has frequently come at a cost to my own childhood and young adulthood.

It's all about balance, right?

I have spent so much time trying to fight my age, but now I want to start embracing it. One way I want to do this is by having a whole lot more fun without fear.

I’m a big New Year’s Eve goal-setter... not resolutions, but goals that set intentions for the year ahead. I’m glad that I do this because I’ve been surprised on more than one occasion with goals that seemed so impossible becoming a reality. My long and detailed list of goals has served a wonderful purpose in my life for many years, but I want to simplify things heading into 2022. So, this is it: 

More Jesus. More Fun. More Presence. 

Those are my goals. That simple. I certainly have ideas for what this will look like, particularly regarding fun (maybe this is the year I finally go full fangirl and fly to that way-too-expensive One Tree Hill convention or maybe it's time to get that tattoo I’ve been thinking about?) and will probably set some sub-goals, but I’m not committing to the specifics. I’m focusing on the themes. I want this next year to feel fresh and alive and youthful. I want to experience joy and love in ways that I haven’t previously. I want to live to live and not to do or to prove. To be honest, I want to be (my version of) a little more reckless and free. She Lives Freely, after all. 

I said earlier that I want to have fun without fear. That’s big for me. I’ve dealt with anxiety for most of my life, but things really started getting worse after I moved at nine years old. It makes sense, my roots were shaken, and I suddenly found myself without my warm and familiar security blanket. However, it fundamentally shifted how I interacted with myself and others. Suddenly the world felt less safe, and I had to compensate by being in a perpetual state of assessing the perceived risks around me and worrying about the consequences of things that hadn’t even happened yet. 

Learning to work with and overcome anxiety is very much a one-step forward, two steps back kind of a process. It has routinely gotten in the way of me being present and living boldly. At my healthiest, I love taking risks and trust falling into life. At my unhealthiest, I’d rather stay curled up in a ball on my couch watching YouTube videos than venture into the outside world. Part of navigating anxiety though is through practice. Heading into this next year, I’m going to practice saying yes to things that scare me, practice stepping outside of my comfort zone, and practice being present enough to enjoy life trusting that God will lead and redeem all along the way. 

I'm excited. Let's go. 

Xo, 

Abbey