Ahh, to be young!

A lot of times people my age will talk about how they wish they were just a little kid again. Everything was so much easier when we were young and carefree with nothing to worry about. And I always nod my head and pretend like I agree, because I know what they mean, but honestly I was not a carefree kid at all.

I was such a high strung little kid. I worried about absolutely everything. I stressed about play dates and homework (1 whole worksheet!) and not being able to fall asleep. 

Back before I had figured out time zones and college students' sleep cycles, I used to lay in bed at night convinced that I was the only person in the whole world that was awake. I would let this thought stress me out until, of course, I lost sleep over it. 

One night, my family watched Romeo & Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio but I couldn't watch the end because it was my bedtime. So I asked my mom to tell me what happened. She explained the rest of the story, and then she left me alone in my room. And I vividly remember crying myself to sleep because I felt so stressed out for Romeo and Juliet. What happened to them was so unfair and unlucky that I couldn't deal with it. (I would have been way less upset had I watched the actual movie, because it kind of sucked...I'm a hardcore Leo fan, but that movie was freakishly anachronistic and it bugs me to this day.)

So, throughout elementary and middle school I continued to struggle to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders. And now that I'm really trying to be honest with myself, I haven't changed much. I still find myself crying for movie characters, and worrying about problems I have no ability to fix. But somehow, in later years I've managed to make it work for me instead of against me, like it used to. When you're young, the world is a very heavy thing to carry. I think maybe I got to a point where I knew that who I was wasn't going to change, nor did I want it to change, but how I handled it really had to change. I needed to get stronger in order to carry the same amount of weight, but expend a lot less effort.

I am so glad that I'm not a little kid anymore. In so many ways, I look back at my 10 year old self as kind of just a crappier version of my 23 year old self (then my 24 year old self, 25 year old self and so on...). A lot of the outlines of ideas I wholeheartedly believe in now were there, but I hadn't worked out the details yet, and that was a great source of stress for me. Now, a lot more of the outlines have been filled in, and, while it's not a complete picture yet, it's enough that I've been able to develop a sense of calm about life that I didn't have before.

Maybe someday when I'm 30 and someone mentions carefree childhood, I'll choose to look back to my early 20's. Which, of course, sounds strange. I'm technically an adult, I'm on my own, I'm broke, I have a real-world, full-time job, and my cost of living is disgusting. Not to mention--I'm still not really "carefree." Stress will always be a part of my life, but at this point I don't think that's a bad thing. I feel good about who I've become and am still becoming. It isn't always pretty or seamless, and it's most certainly not a quiet transition (here I am yacking away about it...) but I can't think of anything else much more worthwhile than becoming who you want to be, and who you need yourself to be. I'm glad I've found a way to stay true to the little girl I was--struggling under the weight of mostly self-imposed pressure and stress. For me, it wasn't about dropping the weight, it was about learning how to carry it properly.



"It is weak and silly to say that you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."
-Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre