A new set of months

I turned 20 a few days ago and I am already having an existential crisis. I don't quite know what to call it. It's not midlife, or quarter life. It's just crisis. Anyways, I am wide awake at 9 AM thinking about nothing in particular.

Every year comes with it's own set of months. Every months has it's set of weeks,  every week it's own day, every day it's own hour and every hour with it's own particular blessing from God.

I wonder what my set of months for 20 is going to bring me. 19 Brought me plot twist after plot twist, life as I knew it flipping over it's head more times than I can count. it destroyed every bit of certainty that I had over who I am, what I wanted, and the image I had panned out for my life.

As kids, we know what we want. Playing more, desert for meals and TV. simple. It was immediate pleasures. We couldn't care less about what is to come. then we approach our teenage years. We develop interests an our personalities start being shaped around those interests, molded by the unforgiving hands of society.

In our last high school years, all of us start thinking about the future. We try our best to act careless and to savor our best days with our friends who we see everyday. But at night, we all stay up late thinking about the world out of school. A world that doesn't have a set of strict rules for us to follow. What to wear, where to sit, when to eat, when to play, what and how much to read. We complain about the lack of freedom not knowing that by limiting our options, or thoughts were truly freed of worry. Alone at night, we start imagining what college would be like, only one word coming to mind "freedom." 12 Grade is the first time our life gets a structure. The path we choose will open the first door.

College is next. We are snatched from the comfort of our dearest friends, family and a school packed with people who look and live like us and we are shoved into a massive group of people from all around the country. The first couple of months are quite scary and over-whelming. We are surrounded by hundreds more people and we still feel lonelier than we have ever felt.

In high school, we believe that turning 18 was when adulthood started.

In college, we turn 20 and look back at the past two years.

I am looking back at my past two years at 9 AM and feeling nothing. I have no major accomplishment to even think about let alone be proud of. I am doubting every choice i have ever made and feeling like a failure. A nobody. I know it's not true. We all do. At times tho, it's hard to stop these thoughts.

I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I remember. I have always been confident that i would someday publish a book. How? I don't know. My certainty had absolutely no base but was the surest thing I knew. It had to be God telling me it will happen.

High school took my writing away from me. By putting my passion second to academics, in the name of getting good grades, I lost touch with what drove my soul. My writing way my way of speaking to the world, and for the sake of seeing A's on my report card, I lost my voice.

It's only now in college, when I have more times of the day to myself, that I started wondering about what made me special from the hundreds of students I walked past every day. I blurred into the crowd and I didn't know my place. I forgot who I was.

There's a beauty in rediscovering yourself that isn't talked about enough. Going to look back at all the things you used to love, learning to find peace and joy in them again, step by step, getting to know yourself. It has it's own special beauty that I now get to witness.

I am a twenty year old trying to remember what it was like to be twelve.

My mom walked into my room right now and wished me a happy new year. It's 2016. A whole new set of months that we have to learn how to use. A new set of gifts and possibilities to discover.

Enkutatash!