Transitioning. Whether it’s going from high school to college, the comfort of your childhood home to a new “home,” somewhere cold and foreign, or maybe just having no idea what you’re doing, no idea what you want. Maybe it’s all of the above, or something completely different. Regardless of the cause, you just feel weird. Something about you, your friends, your life just seems… off. Welcome to the weird part.
Right now, I’m living in truly a shoebox of an apartment in Brooklyn with two roommates I sorta know. I have one really good friend out here, and a cluster of other friends I’m slowly starting to get closer with. I spend a lot of the day with my own company, and I’ve never paid so close attention to detail before in my life – from how much dust collects on my desk within 24 hours to the exact number of minutes it takes to walk to my college. It’s seven, by the way.
It’s really hard to describe why this period in my life is the “weird” part, and what that even means. But if you’re in it too, you’ll get it. Everything is pretty okay – I spend lots of time on school work, I’m making friends with lovely people, I’m getting by on the little money I have, and all the trees are blossoming with these fantastic pink and white buds right now. I get stupidly excited about my first cup of coffee in the morning, and about all the lame photos I take of my friends. They’re so beautiful.
So, surrounded by all these great things, I can’t help but wonder why my life feels like the equivalent of a toddler trying to force a circle peg into a square hole. Is it due to all this change at once? The uncertainty of the future? Being immersed in a new place, or maybe being alone a lot of the time?
After thinking about it, this weird, uncomfortable feeling is actually a good thing. I don’t want to be in a comfortable place, I want to be in the right one. A lot of the time, they aren’t the same thing. And that’s beautiful, because your comfort zone is such a tiny bubble, and there is so much outside of that. It’s impossible to grow in that sweet little place. I do things that make me scared as hell all the time – okay, quick story-time. Last week there was a 21+ concert in Williamsburg. I’m twenty. But it was a Richard Edwards concert, and boy did I really want to see him live. So, I went anyway and hoped for the best. I gave the bouncer my clearly invalid ID and miraculously he didn’t notice the date (or didn’t care) and I got into one of the best shows of my life. Richard even sang a new song about a girl named Jean (that’s my name! I felt super special, okay).
By doing all these new things I’ve never done before, I tend to get a feeling of “maybe I shouldn’t be here, I’ve never done this, maybe I should just go home.” It takes a lot of willpower, but once I ignore these thoughts I’m always so happy I pushed myself in the end.
I’ve come to accept that a large part of my twenties will probably feel like this- lots of coffee dates by myself, figuring out the layout of a new city, constantly planning out my next move in attempt to get rid of this “lost” feeling I have a lot of the time. Maybe none of this made sense, but I know I’m not the only one out there stuck in a weird transitional part of my life where things don’t feel as right as they used to. That’s okay. Embrace the weird time.
