Twenty-something
By Mariel Wiley
Photo by Mikayla LoBasso
When my tassel shifts from right to left, I thought, the pain of growing up will end.
I was wrong; a fledgling who thought I’d already learned to fly. No. I was wrong — it’s the nest fall that really forces the air beneath your wings.
Why didn’t anybody tell us? We grew up thinking that the period of Great Growing came bathed in Friday night lights: the angst and the self discovery and the filling out of shoulders and hips. We grew up thinking that those four years of teenage-hood would be the homestretch before we finally, finally knew who we were inside. No. It was not the homestretch, it was the din of an orchestra before the conductor pulls order from entropy and tells a story made of sound.
I’m 22 now. Four years into this second journey of growth that nobody warned us about, even though this time the pain of growing up cuts to the bone. It’s a deeper, more visceral evolution; it’s the shifting of my soul. The vessel that it lives in is settled now, the span between my fingertips locked in its length forever now. But my mind has known countless forms since I set out on my own, a spectrum of experience known only to me.
When we were in high school, we hated the unknown. It scared us. Our rebellion came in beating against the walls that housed us; biting the hands that fed us. But in our third decade of life, rebellion — experience — comes in the form of letting go. In wandering blindly into that great unknown we once feared so deeply, and trusting that our hearts will lead us to where we’re meant to go.
Nobody told us how lonely it would be. They didn’t warn us how high the stakes were; how hard the falls.
But they also didn’t tell us how sweet this freedom tastes. How wild the adventures; how great the joy of finally, finally learning who we are inside.
I used to wonder why Hollywood only made ‘coming of age’ films about high school, and why our parents would only smile and shift inwards when asked about being twenty-something. Life’s best kept surprise, I suppose: a gift to all of us that make it this far. A decade dedicated to self-discovery and mistakes and being on our own, together. ◆