Thoughts on Fearing the Future: Young and Lost

My parents met when my mom was 19.

She was 16 or 17 when she finished high school, young for her year.

By 19 she was nearly finished her three year degree: Business -

Which of course would lead her to a successful career.

By 24 or so, she had landed an administration job at a state bank. She wore beautiful clothes, had a generous salary and had moved in with her boyfriend of five years, my dad.

Living against the backdrop of my mom's timeline is excruciating because I have a twisted relationship with time. I thought there would be more of it, more time in the years and more time for me to be a young girl in a big world. But time gets lost doing in lukewarm decisions and mundane routines.

I am 2o years old and hold so much anxiety towards my future. I look around at my friends and peers and somehow, they just have it. Even the drifters, the wanderers, they don't seem to be that concerned about their path because, although they don't know what it is yet, they know they have one. But I'm not so sure about me.

My best friend studies law. Throughout middle school and high school she made the right choices. She worked hard for tangible goals but kept her dreams in sight. She graduated high school with phenomenal results and although she didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, she studies law at one of the best universities in the country. Through one of her mom's contacts she secured an internship at an exciting firm. She's pretty and homely and one of the best people I know, and it is only a matter of months until a sweet, charming guy decides he needs her for his heart. She says she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life, but to me it is so clear. She will live well.

And then there's me. All mild chaos, words unsaid, regrets and longing for more.

I'm in my second year of university and I hate my degree: Arts - a double major in Communications and Psychology. Ugh. I applied to universities interstate and overseas and was accepted into all of them, but I couldn't make a decision and wound up staying in my family home and attending the university that's only a half hour bus trip from my house.

I play with the idea of changing into a Design or Marine Biology course but I can never commit to change because I'm too afraid to solidify things. I don't want to be 24 when I finish university but at this rate I will be. I want to be a young author and travel and have a job that I love. I want to be married before I'm 25 so I can have kids before I'm 30, but goodness gracious, God knows I am hard to love.

I'm scared of the future and I'm scared of not knowing where I will be in five years. I look at the map and wonder which city or state I might have moved to and it makes me nauseous. "Was it the right choice?" I ask my 25 year old self. "Did you meet that person you have been waiting to meet? Was it worth it?"

But there is another fear which is darker and scares me more than the former. It is the nightmare that I never leave. That in five years I'm still here, in my family home working a job that is just okay... and everything is just okay. Or maybe I just live not very far from here, in a shared room and work a low earning job and feel my youth slip from me everyday.

Oh, yes... my third greatest fear is, of course, aging. Sagging skin and departing from youth. I wouldn't worry so much about this if I knew my other fears had been addressed. I wouldn't care so much about my sagging and wrinkling if I knew in my heart of hearts that I would be a beloved and esteemed author and a husband who loves me.

I want big things but a small part of me is afraid of settling and being happy - forgetting my dreams in a two bedroom two bathroom. I know it's crazy and it is - but I am so acutely aware that this is my only life to live. And what might have been the best two decades of my life are behind me.

I'm 20 years old and I write this from my bed in my family home. I don't know if this will resonate with anyone out there, but if there is a stray soul out there who does: I wish you the very best of luck, sailor, for we are about to set sail on turbulent seas.

S. Alexandra

27.04.2020