Sophomore Year
I’ve been thinking a lot this summer about the act of growing up.
One of my best friends from high school, a guy I’ve known since sophomore year, got married. Since we graduated high school, I’ve seen him write for the New York Times, get a masters degree from Oxford, and fall in love with the incredible woman who is now his wife. We don’t talk as much as we used to and we only see each other once every few years, but every time we do, I am surprised by how much he still feels like the kid I knew in high school and how much he feels like a totally new person.
A lot of my friends are people I’ve known for seven or more years, which is also about the amount of time it takes for most of the cells in your body to die and be replaced. We are quite literally, on a cellular level, not the same people we were when we met. It feels like a privilege to get to see them grow up — to grow up alongside them. As kids, in high school or at the very start of college, we were all trying to figure it out. Now we’re still trying to figure it out, but I think we’re all a little better at it. One of my greatest joys has been getting to know the adults they’ve become.
Sometimes, I don’t feel like I’ve grown much. Rationally, I know I have. I’m a lot more free with my emotions than I used to be. I trust myself more. I’ve survived things that would be unfathomable to my younger self, like living in the epicenter of a global pandemic and being unemployed for a few months as a result. I know how to cook now, and I dress a lot better. I’ve grown into a person I really like being, but internally, sometimes I still feel like the kid I was. Like I’m playing pretend. Imposter syndrome for adulthood.
Maybe I expected to know more by now than I do, or maybe it’s just that I expected to have accomplished different things. And I know that anyone even a few years older than me would probably say, “you’re still so young,” but even if that is true (which it is), this is the oldest I’ve ever been. I have a great life — a very privileged one — that allows me to live in an apartment I love, in a city I love, and for the most part, do the things that I love. But it’s not the life I imagined having by now.
I think I’ve spent my whole life waiting for my life to start. (Yes, writing that sentence out, I do see how oxymoronic it is. But isn’t that the point?) Winter break my sophomore year of high school, I read Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and realized for the first time that writing TV shows was a job someone could have. I spent the rest of high school wanting to find a way to do that as a career. It was the first time I felt a real purpose. I had always been a good student because I knew I was supposed to be a good student, but this was the first time I understood why you put in the effort to do the best work you can. My goal for the rest of high school was to do everything I could so I could go to a college where I could study screenwriting. Then I wasn’t able to afford the college I wanted to go to, so instead of finding a way — and looking back there were plenty of ways — to still do that and all the other things I wanted to do, I decided I would wait until I got through college and moved to LA or New York. And then I moved to New York a few months before that aforementioned pandemic — you know, the one we’re still living through — and I told myself I had no control over once again pushing back what I wanted, even though I had four months where the government was paying me to stay inside, four months that I could have devoted to writing. I’ll give myself some grace there because those were unprecedented times, but I have spent a lot of my life wasting time. I have been so frustrated that my life story hasn’t played out how I wanted it to that I’ve missed out on enjoying the story I’m actually creating.
Growing up is a lot harder than I thought it would be, or rather, building the life that I want is a lot harder than I thought it would be. Sometimes it’s easy to choose a path and follow it as far as it goes, but what happens when you get lost and end up on a different path? How long does it take before you realize you’re not going where you thought you were? How long do you stay on it, just in case?
One time in high school, a different best friend and I got lost in the woods. It was the day before our sophomore year. We met up at our school’s open house, and then we went to another friend’s apartment. We got lost trying to get back to the school. I was wearing flip flops (again, I dress much better now), and we spent hours wandering through the woods trying to figure out where we were. But eventually, we found our way. Starting that school year with blisters was rough, but it ended up being one of the most transformative years of my life. It was the year I finally started to become myself.
A decade later, I still feel a lot like the kid who was lost in the woods, but I know I found my way eventually. Looking back, I’m so grateful for that time, for the opportunity to grow into myself. It feels frustrating now to feel not fully grown, but in another decade, I hope I look back on this time and feel like it is equally as transformative as that time was. As much as it sucks to still feel like a sophomore in high school, it’s reassuring that I’ve done this all before. It’s a gift to know that all I need in order to become who I’m supposed to be is an understanding of who I’ve been. There are a lot more versions of myself to meet, and I’m sure once I meet them, I’ll be surprised by how much they feel like someone I’ve known a long time and how much they’ll feel like someone completely new.