Today is my last first day of school ever.
Just let that sink in for a second. I truly don't know how this happened. Yesterday Ashley sent me a Facebook memory from our first day of fifth grade 10(!) years ago. That was literally half of my life ago. It feels like it could've been last year.
I've never been extremely excited about growing up. I had my first existential crisis at age six when it dawned on me that once I turned seven, I was never going to be six again, and that in fact I was just going to keep getting older and would one day be done being a kid altogether. But now that I'm older, there are some things about being a grown up that I do like. I've always had big, entrepreneurial ambitions, but most of these were massive failures until all of a sudden one day they started to turn into successes. Ninety percent of the things that bring me fulfillment every day I would not be able to do if I were much younger. It's hard enough as it is to get people to take you seriously as a twenty year old who owns a theatre company or is producing a film or asking strangers to be guests on their podcast; four or five years ago these things wouldn't even be in the realm of possibility.
Still, there are times where I really just can't fathom how the last seven or eight years went by so fast. Even though I've done it three times, when my parents walked out of my apartment last week after saying goodbye, I was left with the same feeling of stunned uncertainty I had my very first day alone at school. How am I supposed to survive by myself? As Rory Gilmore says, "I need my mommy and I don't care who knows it!" It's just the simple moments where the realization that you're supposed to be a grown up is overwhelming, like when you can't figure out how to get the printer to work but your dad isn't there to work his magic or you can't open your salsa jar but your mom isn't there to help. I guess I always expected there to be some kind of switch that flipped and one day I would just feel like an adult and be ready to be on my own, but the older I get the more I don't think that's going to happen.
I have to admit that sometimes I am jealous of the elementary and middle schoolers that I see running around the playground at the grade school across from campus. I know in my ten-year-old mind nothing was easy, but I was stressed about grades that no one was ever going to see and whether or not my friends had all earned extra recess on Friday. In retrospect, life was just so simple. I don't want to go back to that forever, but I just wish I could have a little more time where I was just a kid and didn't have to think about whether someone is going to break into my apartment or how I'm going to be able to pay bills when I can't find a work study job.
That's pretty much all I have to say, I don't really have any words of wisdom to share. I guess I'm just really curious if I will ever feel ready to be a grown up. We'll see! But I'm not Benjamin Button and I can't go backwards, so for now I think I'll just have to try to keep remembering all of the reasons being old is a good thing. Sometimes I tell my mom and dad I wish they weren't such good parents so I wouldn't wish so much that I could just stay with them forever, but I'm really grateful that at least I know they'll always let me be their kid when I need to be!
To anyone else who's starting school, or in a new stage of life right now, I'm sending you lots of good luck and well wishes. You got this!
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