Hey, world! It’s been a while.
I finished my first year of college a few weeks ago. Hurrah! To celebrate, I was going to write a thoughtful post about my year, but then it turned out that my brain was completely cracked from writing 14 papers in one semester, so instead I spent my two weeks at home regressing into my high school self. Let me introduce you to the younger incarnations of me.
This is 16-year-old Sara. Her hobbies include watching makeup videos on YouTube and doing homework until 3 in the morning. Her only outfit is a hoodie, jeans, and either UGGS and flip-flops (to her mother’s chagrin). She wants to be a writer, and her biggest fear is that her two-year-long crush on her best friend will last for all of eternity. (It did not.)
Sara’s favorite person is her little brother. Here he is making a pizza:
Here she is making fun of him:
But things changed. 17-year-old Sara was stormier. She had her first break-up (which consumed about 2 months of her life) and spent a lot of time crying on the floor. She stopped writing. She started counseling. But she got through the year, and graduated high school. Slowly, she found her happiness again.
And then there was the gap year. 18-year-old Sara took form, and in the first few months at home, spent most of her time baking, working out, reading, and organizing her bookshelves.
She spent a lot of time working out who she wanted to be (answer: not a stay-at-home/work-at-home wife). In February of that year, she left for Holland, started a blog, and the rest is history.
It is weird to be in that house, in that room where my life has taken shape and form for the last nine years. It is especially weird because the last three there were so turbulent: there were periods of extreme happiness and giggle-till-you-fall-over joy; but there were also long stretches when everything I touched seemed to turn gray and lifeless. When I sit at my desk, make my bed, or look in the mirror that I once used to paint my face, it feels like I am walking through the ghosts of my former self. 16-year-old me, filled with hope and joy; 17-year-old me, consumed with anger and confusion; 18-year-old me, pulling out of the skin I had built for myself, and figuring out the ways in which I wanted to grow.
I turn 20 next month. It’s just a number, but I am still happy to leave the remnants of my former self behind. My teenage years were, in many ways, wonderful: I visited eight countries, lived on two continents, wrote a book, begun a blog, fallen in love, and started college (for free!). I have such a better idea of who I am and who I want to be than I did two, three, five years ago, and I am ready to start my twenties. In ten years, I could be married; I might have a master’s or a PhD; I might have children, own a business, be published. The future is ripe with possibilities. And I’m ready for all them.
