We Are Only in Our Twenties

I went out one night recently with an acquaintance who I had not seen in a while. With graduation quickly approaching for myself and many of my friends, it is fair to say things are overall pretty hectic in all of our lives at the moment. Naturally, many of our conversations are focused around our lives as young adults as they are preparing to begin (as if our lives did not already begin over twenty years ago). All of these future-focused conversations have really got me doing some introspective thinking as of late.

Now, this acquaintance and I, we do not always see eye-to-eye. A lot of the time, we do. But one major difference between us that I have noticed increasingly as graduation has approached, is our outlook on life moving forward. Of course, there's nothing wrong with either of the two ways we envision our lives to be from this point on, but I just can't help but be fascinated by the very fact that such a difference exists. Like many other things, I suspect this is the result of our culture and the messages we have constantly heard for our entire lives. I'll explain.

While I was chatting with this acquaintance, we got around to such topics of apartment shopping, career paths, and starting families. She was worried sick about her future. She has a pretty good internship now, and she was worried about whether it was going to lead to a permanent full-time position, post-graduation. She has to find a new place to live, and she is hoping to move in with her current boyfriend, in hopes that this situation *obviously* leads to marriage, children, and a quiet, safe life in the Kansas countryside.

Like I said before, there is certainly nothing wrong with this path, if that is the way your life goes. In fact, I know someone else who has already graduated, started her career, gotten married, and settled down in the Kansas countryside. Happily ever after.

But to me, in my own honest opinion, that seems downright crazy. Why? We are in our early twenties, not our late thirties, and we have so much life left to live to figure everything out. There's no rush to know all the answers and settle ourselves down forever.

Back to my acquaintance. When she asked me what plans I have for after May 14th when we become full-time adults, I simply shrugged and told her, "I dunno." Her eyes widened and she almost spat out her drink. "What do you mean, you don't know?" Well, I don't know. I can't tell the future, and I have learned to accept this fact because there's no way worrying will ever make me a psychic, and even if it could, there's no way seeing the future can actually help a person change it, anyway.

(Side note: I'd like to really emphasize just how foolish it is to be so shocked when someone says they don't know what the future holds. Because even though this acquaintance of mine has an internship, a relationship, and soon maybe even an apartment, she still knows just as little about the weather tomorrow as I do. She's just fooled herself into a false sense of security thinking she *knows* the future thanks to a few material things which give her a semblance of safety.)

My acquaintance was shocked by my seemingly blasé reaction to her surprise. But I'm used to this by now. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this is a concept which our culture has manufactured and spoon-fed to us from the beginning of time. It freaks us out when we don't have a clear idea of what the future looks like. And understandably so, especially for Millennials, who are used to having the world at our fingertips and thus being able to find an answer for just about anything in a few seconds' time, provided that the Wi-Fi connection is strong enough. But we can't Google what our futures hold.

No, there's a necessity for patience and flexibility that one must have about seeing where their life will take them. It's extremely uncomfortable for someone my age (myself included) to sit tight and wait and see how things go. We are ill at ease with the idea of being comfortable in the uncomfortable unknown that must accompany change if it is to be accepted, because we are so used to knowing everything right now.

Add to this the fact that we, as young people, have been enculturated to believe we need to have all the answers the very moment we enter the "real world," (nevermind the fact that we have no experience to actually draw from in this mythical world). We are told we need to land an internship, graduate, get a good foothold on a longterm career right out of the gates, find someone to love, get married, and settle down to raise a few kids in order to start the cycle over again.

And that's fine. We can do that, if we choose. But do we have to be in such a damned big hurry to do it all right this instant? Are we not allowed every single second in our lives to get to know ourselves and grow and learn more about the world around us, before we are pressured into quickly making so many decisions which will affect us in the longterm? I think we are.

I've only really been taking care of myself on my own as a semi-adult for about four years now. I'm in no hurry to grow up and try to take care of others, too. I really don't feel the pressure to start my career right now. I want to have some fun first. I don't know what I'll be doing after graduation. I don't have it all figured out right now. And that's okay. I can't tell the future, and that's the point. It's not supposed to be determined yet. It is open-ended and left up to me to decide. I want to take for granted that privilege and all the choices I am able to make as a result of it. I can't afford to waste any freedom on worrying about the fear and anticipation that the world has tried to instill in me.

My generation is the one who birthed the phrase "YOLO," and perhaps that's because, as a whole, we are so used to instant gratification that we don't have much of a longterm orientation. Living only once is often accredited for young people doing a number of stupid things, in the name of maybe being dead tomorrow (although statistically unlikely). While it is true that I will live only once, that doesn't mean I have any inclination of how long my life will be. Maybe I will die tomorrow. Or maybe I'll die at the ripe old age of 78. I'm not worried about it. Either way, I have plenty of time to figure stuff out before I rush into any decisions about marriage, career, apartments, or even getting a house plant. After all, I'm only in my twenties.

College Friendships & International Exposure

I think back to August of 2012 when I made that first drive to Wichita all by myself, with my belongings all packed up and ready to move to college with me. I was only relocating an hour north, but at 18 years old, I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified. I can remember feeling excited to finally live on my own and be able to go anywhere and do anything, at any time of the day or night without having to answer to my mother. I remember thinking what a huge, vast place Wichita was and how I was probably never going to learn how to get around or remember where anything was located. I also remember feeling like my heart had been ripped straight out of my chest when I drove out of my mom's driveway after kissing my three-year-old baby brother good-bye. I remember feeling so guilty because I just knew he was going to forget all about me and things were never going to be the same again (he didn't, and they were).

I was so sad and scared for many reasons which I was leaving behind, but it quickly occurred to me that I was also scared for a few reasons looking forward. I didn't have a job secured yet and I was unsure of just how long the money I'd made at my summer job would sustain my new college lifestyle. I was moving to a place with a higher crime rate and I couldn't help but imagine being mugged in the bad neighborhoods of the city I would now call home. But perhaps most daunting of all, now that I look back at that moment in my life, is a fear which is far less tangible and  much more realistic: I did not know a single person in Wichita. I was the only one from my graduating class to be going to WSU as a freshman, and while I was very excited about getting away from the people I'd long ago outgrown, it also momentarily paralyzed me with panic.

I had no one. The realization really hit me that first night when I went to bed in my dark new dorm room, all by myself, without my Mommy, my baby brother, my best friend, or my boyfriend. I only had myself. My roommate hadn't arrived yet and there was no guarantee I'd like her when she did (I didn't). I was just going to have to make friends in my classes and cross my fingers that I'd eventually find some people who would understand me.

It took some time at first, but eventually I did find my own little tribe of various misfits and weirdos.

Freshman year was rough, and I really only still speak to one person who I knew at that time. I like to think of that first year as the awkward freshman year that a lot of people experience, where you try your hand at a lot of different things just to find out what you like and see what sticks. My roommate and I didn't have much in common and we lived in an unhealthy silence for the entire year. This greatly shaped my outlook on making new friends. My suitemate and I, however, banded together for a while, but towards the end of the year that began to disintegrate as our paths went in separate directions. I'd made a few other friends through work (I actually ended up getting a job before August was even over, and I stayed there for a year) and various other activities. At the end of the year, though, I left Wichita to go home for the summer still feeling pretty alone.

The following year was really the turning point in my college career. You always hear stories where people say "we met in college" or they talk about how they went to college with their best friends/bridesmaids/groomsmen. This is the really profound part of my journey where I first encountered those kinds of characters in my life's story. I moved into a different residence hall, partially by choice, and partially because the university's administration kicked returning students out of where I'd previously lived. It doesn't really matter now how my path led me there, because I ended up exactly where I was meant to be. I was at Brennan.

I cannot count on both my hands all of the countries represented in Brennan. There are a lot. Within the first week of living there, I had made new friends from all over the world; from places I'd never known anyone from before; and certainly from places I could not identify on a map. Brennan was a hodge-podge of so many different ethnicities and nationalities, due in part to its close location to the International Education office, and also because it had the cheapest housing rates available. Throwing so many international students and domestic students together in two buildings certainly had its quirks.

Although we came from many different cultures individually, the combined culture of Brennan was one rich in brutal honesty, immense sexual innuendo, racist jokes, and mild sexism. We all spent entirely too much time together, frequently invaded one another's personal space, knew terrible truths about each other, and at some point everyone had been pissed off at someone else. Despite all of our various differences, what kept us together were the things we had in common. We were one giant, usually loving, always misbehaving, slightly dysfunctional, multi-colored family.

I have this big world map on my wall right above my bed this year, where I put little adhesive tags with the names of my loved ones on it. I am a visual learner and seeing my friends spread out geographically like that really puts it into context for me. There are some tabs on the map which represent people who I did not meet through Brennan, and I cherish those international friendships just as dearly. I know by my age, plenty of people have accomplished much more. But I'm quite proud of being twenty-one-and-a-half years old and having friends from six out of seven continents. (Does anyone really live in Antarctica anyway?)

The Brennan residence hall has since been shut down by the administration, and we dispersed in different directions. We all feel collectively pretty sad and even a little bitter about it, but I remember what a friend told me last year: "Brennan's not a building. It's a community." A group of us moved together into another residence hall after it closed, and we still hang out regularly. It's not quite the same as it was before, but just like anything else in life, it has evolved as time has gone on. A few of the members of my Brennan family have since returned back to their home countries, and while I always hate it when the international students leave, Facebook does help keep us close. And I doubt if they know this, but I assume that I have a place to stay in any of their home countries if ever I should need it.

I look at this map on my wall, and I think back to my freshman year in Wichita. I spent that first lonely night in my empty dorm room, just a few doors down in the very hall where I sleep now. I didn't know a single person when I moved to (what I thought was) a big city three years ago. Wichita seemed cold and lonely and truly terrifying to even the most headstrong of eighteen-year-old girls.

Apart from my time spent cultivating international relationships at Brennan, I did travel abroad for the first time in college, which inspired me to take a solo trip to check out an even bigger city later. When I look at my map of friends and see how far away the places I've been are located from the tag that says "Mom & Zane", I realize that the one hour drive from home to Wichita in 2012 was not so far, afterall.

I have grown an incredible amount in such a short span of time during my college years. I know I'm responsible for most of it myself, but I don't pretend that at least part of that growth has been due to them; those little adhesive tags littered all over my map, which represent living, breathing people, with whom I've lived, slept, ate, argued, and known on a very real level. Without even one of those people in my life, I would not be the very person I am today. Nobody can do everything in this world on their own, least of all grow.

Three years ago when I made that interminable drive to Wichita with all my belongings, the thought never once crossed my mind that I was driving toward such meaningful friendships and such varied cultural exposure. I felt so alone in a city of 380,000. I knew no one. Now, a short time later, I feel so at home all over the world; and it all changed within the same city limits.

Now I feel I'm outgrowing Wichita, just as I felt when I outgrew Ark City. I made a big girl leap into a bigger city 50 miles away, even though I was scared. It took some time and adjustment, but I now know I survived. Having that knowledge and experience under my belt, I am now much more fearless to do it again, on a larger scale.

It's strange to think that so much has changed in such a short amount of time. But meeting so many people from so many places (along with my own traveling experience) has taught me that I can indeed go anywhere and do anything, because I now know I can make a home and find friends anywhere at all in this world, no matter how scared and alone I might feel when I first arrive. I've just got to look around to find my own little tribe of misfits and weirdos, wherever I may be. They look different and they come from different places, but no matter where I may go, they're there: friendships waiting to be made.

"Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open." - Albus Dumbledore