Growing Up & Learning Lessons

*Note: this is the first thing I've actually finished in a long time, and it's not even a story! This came pouring out into my notebook, practically before I realized what had happened. It's more of a philosophical discourse, or maybe a journal entry, but I would like to share it with you.

Growing up is hard. What makes it harder is the fact that there aren’t any rules for it, or guidebooks and instruction manuals. People jut tell you to grow up, but no one ever tells you that crucial bit of information: how. So what are you supposed to do? Seriously, this isn’t just something you score points on—it’s LIFE—sort of pass/fail at this point. And there’s another thing—who gets to dictate what constitutes success or failure at life? I know people who some may consider failures, who knows, some may even consider me one, but truthfully, none of us are failures. We’re learning, each at our own pace, and each in our own way. Some people start this whole life thing with a handicap, be it physical or emotional, and others start it with the chips stacked in their favor, as the saying goes. Either way, unexpected things always occur to help the learning process along. Sometimes, these things are painful. I have several periods of my life that were excruciating at the time, but if they’d never happened, I wouldn’t have learned the things I needed to learn.

For example, I have been in one romantic relationship so far, and I royally screwed it up from the start. It hurt, and I’ve cried gallons of tears over it, but ultimately, I learned something extremely important. I’m not in the proper emotional state to be in a relationship. I have too many unresolved issues from my childhood and my life to enter a healthy partnership. I can’t go into a relationship looking for a knight in shining armor to sweep me off my feet and fix all my problems for me—I need to be able to fix my problems and take care of myself on my own, otherwise the only relationships I’ll get into will be dependent and unhealthy. If I wait, however, I will be able to enter a relationship fully, accepting help and support when I need it, but also being able to give the same help and support back. Only then will it be fair for both me and my partner.

Wow, that was a lot to come churning out of my pen in a very short period of time. A lot of processing, too. I guess crying all night tends to clear things up, or at least release a lot of stuff. It’s funny, though. I haven’t been able to truly write in a very long time, but something must have come loose tonight, some distraction must have been removed, because now I can’t seem to get the words out fast enough. Honestly, I think my hand is cramping up. It’s funny how what seems like the death of a dream reveals itself to be simply the birth of a new one. That’s what I was crying about earlier. You see, I’ve been planning this road trip for months. I have a car, I had a partner, and everything was getting set. Everything but the two most important things—money and safety. I’m nineteen, and my friend is seventeen. We’re both young women, and we were planning on driving 3,000 miles across the country, with only a few people to stay with, and no set itinerary. Wow.

See, it’s always been a dream of mine to just get in my car and drive. To just go, go and see the world, discover what wonders would pop up on my trail. But through a lot of tears, and the very wise counsel of my mother, I realized that I need to set aside my pride, and the darned stubbornness that I have a penchant for, and accept that now is not the time for this adventure. I’m not ready. I don’t have the money, I certainly don’t have the experience, and it just wouldn’t be safe. There is no doubt in my mind that I will go on this trip, but it’s become a ‘someday’, not a ‘now-day’. I will go, and I will have a blast, just not now, not at this time. I have things I need to do now, things that will help me later in life. I need to work, to start fashioning a self-sufficient life for myself. I need to decide where I want to go to school, and what adventures I want to have later, but right now, I need to lick my emotional scars, and simply be.

I can’t do anything fun and adventurous unless I know how to take care of myself, and I won’t learn how to take care of myself if I skip the learning part. That’s the thing about me, I’m so impatient, I don’t want to wait for the learning, I just want it there NOW! And that doesn’t work, because as much as I want it NOW, I can’t have it NOW, and the wanting doesn’t make it come any faster. I would rather take this trip when I can truly experience it and when I’m truly ready for it, not just because my pride won’t let me quit. That is the lesson I learned today, I only hope I remember it when the time comes to use it. Peace and goodnight to all, and may your lessons be learned as they need to, with as little heartache as possible.