To Grow Before I Bloom

Growing up is messy- a beautiful, inspiring state of constant confusion, emotions experienced on the greatest scales and hope found in the best places at the right times.

  Growing up is trying on different personalities, throwing away what doesn’t fit, holding onto the qualities we admire. Somewhere in the mix of who we were and who we want to be lies the profound truth of who we are. We are someone today and will probably be someone else tomorrow. It’s terrifying, but I find this truly exciting.

   Growing up is not a fixation on our ideal selves and the denouncing of our true selves. Growing up is adopting different characters, deciding who we want to be that day- or more accurately, who we need to be that day.

    And me? I’m happy with who I am today. I’m not perfect, but I am trying. I’m not waiting for some epiphanic moment to arrive where everything falls into place. I’m going to have a lot of jobs, a lot of passions, a lot of companions. I’m going to have a lot of memories, a lot of moments- and I am going to document them all.

    I want to remember what it felt like to be sixteen going on seventeen. To remember when we were young and didn’t know where we were going. Remember what our laughs sounded like before we grew up and forgot to smile as much. I want to remember the songs we listened to, the conversations we had, the laughs we shared, the books I read, the movies that touched me. I want to look around every once in a while.

   When I started this essay, my goal was to write something you would like. Something honest, not emotional, funny?- maybe, relatable?- definitely. I wanted to write something worth reading all the way down to the sentence you’re perusing right now. At this point, I’m shifting my purpose to write something worth writing. Something worthy of eloquence and hope and words strung together.

  You see, growing up is an art project- the brushes and strokes turning a blank canvas into something beautiful.

  To bloom is to embrace the mess, the confusion, the emotions, the characters, the personalities, and memories. To bloom is to be free and content right where we are.

Cheers to growing up together and everything that entails.