on growing up
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer" ― Albert Camus
“This is Luis,” mother said to the passerby, “He is 12. 12 going on 25”. I smiled as I looked up at her. The kind of smile only the naivety of youth can provide.
I spent the majority of my youth dreaming of the days I’d be older. On Tuesday I’d be an astronaut, on Thursday I’d be a lawyer, and on Fridays, I’d be the next Jimmy Kimmel. I’d be unimaginably in love, at least that’s what the telenovelas I watched with my mom led me to conclude. What a life I would live.
And as life has a funny way of doing, the days turned to months and months to years and well, I’m single, 23 years old and I’m not cracking any cases or perusing the galaxy (or even remotely famous).
I’m lonely, broken, and unwaveringly lost.
I moved out of my house when I was 18, with no intent of returning. That is, well, until I moved back in 3 years later. Purely a financial decision, I was optimistic about moving back home to finish college. I mean, when else would it be socially acceptable to bum out on your parent’s couch?
Home is a garden where the flowers bloom. A safe place to rest, to feel at peace, to be inspired. At least, that’s what home should be. For me, home is a subtle reminder of what once was. The place where childhood became something I wish I could forget rather than something to be remembered. In my home, the kitchen reeked of inter-generational trauma, my old bedroom stained with feelings of inadequacy, and the floorboards rotten with unanswered prayers to a god I never believed in.
It didn’t take long before the ideation of escape became inevitable, and when the opportunity arose, I took it as my life depended on it, and in a way of sorts, it did.
I had left again, but this time it felt different. I dropped out of school. Fled the safety of financial stability with my parents, and I bought a one-way ticket to the city. Without the safety net of university or the place I once called home, I was truly on my own.
It was time to grow up.
Living on your own has this sort of lust that you can’t get from anything else. It's like, “Oh I can cook my pasta naked while blasting the Hamilton soundtrack at max volume, wait where did I put that blunt again…?”. And for a while, there was a feeling that everything was to be okay. And I surely would’ve hoped things would’ve stayed that way forever. But when the music fades, the sun goes down, and your dishes are left rotting in the sink, the only thing left to face is yourself.
It's been a little over a year since the day I moved out, and I still feel lost. I wake up and look at my phone only to see disappointment in its reflection. Like I’m not doing enough or I’m not where I am supposed to be. A paralysis of comparison consumes me as I peer into the lives of those I’d call my friends on social media. I find my reflection hard to look at. Every blemish stares back at me like a bad dream. The acne scars on my face scream bloody murder and I wish someone would just erase me completely. I stop looking at myself because frankly, I can’t stand it. Going to work a job that barely pays the bills but gives me enough purpose to survive another day, listening to the wishes of a clientele that frankly might view me as a member of a lower class.
In my spare time, I reminisce. I think about my father or lack thereof. My family, and how I only ever wished I felt more at home with them. My internal battle with self-love. The way some days I wake up hating the person that looks back at me in the mirror. The friends I’ve lost, the ones that appear in my dreams, the ones I wish hadn’t brutally exited my life. I think about the women I’ve met, the love lost, and the love not found. I think about my longing for more. The feeling of dissatisfaction, never feeling like I’ve had enough of a good thing. I think about the depression I’ve felt recently. I think about how growing up, wasn’t supposed to be this hard. So, I get lost in this tornado of feeling, a vicious stream of consciousness.
In these moments, it's a hopeless feeling. What happened to the exuberant, optimistic, carefree, young man I once was? The dreams I once had seem like a distant memory.
Is this what growing up feels like?
I went to the local springs recently, intent on feeling Nostalgia for the previous summer. Moments with people I’d never feel again. A time when everything seemed much simpler. This day was particularly cloudy. Submerged beneath the blistering cold water, I closed my eyes.
It was there I felt it. For as Mother Earth spun around and around, as the leaves traded their green for brown, and the sky faded from dusk to dawn, there I was. Beaten, bruised, and broken, but firmly I maintained. Present. Alive. Vulnerable, but not defeated.
And maybe it was the late nights spent drinking with friends. The iced americano crafted by the cute, artsy barista at my favorite bookstore or the last cool breeze of Austin’s gentle spring. Or maybe it was the once-in-a-generation total solar eclipse. (There I said it, the Eclipse changed me.) But something had changed.
Or rather, change itself, was the answer. Water has this tendency to absorb with it the nature of its surroundings. The chemicals that seep from the nearby sediment, the plastic bottles floating downstream, even the harmless feathers left from the adolescent ducks grazing the nearby hill. Just like the water in which I submerged myself, I had allowed myself to absorb the language of my surroundings. Holding onto branches of the past. Worrying about the weight of the future. Overthinking the scarcity of the present. Perpetually drowning in vicious rapids, not yet dying but not exactly living. It was at this moment I decided I would allow my soul to flow gracefully down the stream of life. I had to move on from the branches I so ever clung onto. To choose not to forget, but to live despite my pain.
It was in this water I let go.
It was in this water I was reborn.
Sometimes when I fall asleep at night, I dream that I could do it all over again. I wake up in my bedroom with my Nintendo DS still turned on under my pillow. Saturday morning cartoons playing on the living room TV. My dad whistles me downstairs for breakfast. In these dreams, I never grow up.
But when I wake, I realize that the little boy in my dreams never went anywhere. He stares at me in the mirror every day. I’m learning to feel gratitude for the reflection. For now, I am happy to be here. I am happy to let go of the pain.
Because growing up means letting go.
You’re an inspiration idc what they say