Adulthood: The end of childhood or the start of everything else?

To my fellow students,

I’m turning 20 next week, and I am terrified. 

I am currently sitting on my bed, covered in sheets that once belonged in my childhood bedroom, trying to put my finger on what it is I find so terrifying. 5 years ago, I was 15, sitting on these same sheets and full of anger and anxiety: I hated my hair, my body, my clothes, my friends. I was convinced these feelings would disappear the moment I ‘grew up’, because that’s what people tell you. “These years won’t last forever,” and I listened, because I was starving for that taste of independence.

Well, this is independence. It is not the glamorised Hollywood experience of college parties, drunken love and coming of age in one pivotal moment of clarity. More often, it’s living in a flat with 8 strangers, without your best friend down the road, and not being able to walk into the next room and turn your brother or sister’s terrible music off. 

At 20, I still have the same feelings as that 15-year-old did, but somehow this birthday marks the end of my childhood. The romanticisation of leaving your ‘teens’ behind is a comfort when you’re still in those years (barraged with changing bodies and hormones that make you crave the day you’re set free), but once you stand on the edge of them, it makes this transition feel a lot more daunting. Growing up once meant excitement and liberation. I was going to be a popstar, I was going to only wear purple, and I was going to straighten my frizzy hair every day because I could. I wasn’t going to miss the sound of mum’s singing, or dad’s guitar, or my brother’s music. But now, he’s on another continent and I can’t stop wondering what music he’s listening to. 

Growing up has actually meant lots of long, lonely nights in my room, cry-singing to songs I thought I’d never like and being too self-conscious to talk to my flatmates. So, whilst I may have survived my first year of university and made it to the second with all limbs intact, and though I do always straighten my hair, I am certainly not a popstar, and sometimes I think I have never felt smaller.

The reality of growing up, and particularly moving away to university, is that we are thrown into the deep end of the unknown. We are responsible for our education, our social lives, our sleep schedules, picking ourselves up when we fall down and make mistakes, and let’s face it, that happens a lot. There is also the unrealistic expectation of what our teens should have looked like – full of secrets and parties and a crowd of 30 friends, which makes growing up so much harder for those who didn’t meet the ‘socially acceptable’ criteria.

But there’s a bright side: the unknown also means a fresh start. University is the one place in our adult lives where everyone around us is in the exact same boat. We have societies and clubs, we study what we want without dragging our heels through 4^th period maths, and we are provided with a brand-new set of potential friends the moment we move into our accommodation. Of course, I understand it is not as easy or as simple as that. I am painfully shy at the best of times, but our 20’s and university are the perfect time to discover or even reinvent ourselves. This is the time for parties, for late night adventures and for meeting people from all stretches of the country instead of the small pool available in your hometown. There shouldn’t be a deadline for experiencing life.

The unshakeable fear we are falling behind and won’t catch up is a visceral but unnecessary one. The years we spend here are not just lessons on engineering or art-history, but lessons on how to grow, how to navigate life and how to stop worrying about what’s around the corner, because truly, life will throw curveballs at every stage. The meaning of ‘these years won’t last forever’ will start to sink in. These friends, these experiences, these Otley-runs, or movie-marathons are all integral to teaching us who we are away from home and who we can become.

You will have questions, doubts, fears and meltdowns, but amongst the eternity of minutes of grief and stress, juggling rent, a social life and a degree, you will find yourself living. You will find yourself travelling, meeting new people, making friends or even falling in love. You will find yourself. And eventually, you might find you love the terrible music that your sibling once haunted you with, because it reminds you of them.