After 18 Shit Gets Confusing

Is it just me or is everyone I used to know getting engaged, married, pregnant, and starting families already??? I feel like I am still 16 years old and trying to figure out what I should do with my life. Actually, if anything, I think I knew more about what my life plan was at 16 than I do now at 20. But, that's exactly the point of this post.

After I turned 18 everything changed. My mom always warned me about this. Ever since we can remember everyone we have grown up with has been on relatively similar paths. We all went to elementary school, middle school, and high school. We all went through similar struggles of finding friends, wanting to grow up, and other trivial crap. We were all on similar levels of maturity. Just a bunch of kids who thought they knew everything about the world and had dreams for their futures. If anything, in high school some people diverted slightly from the general path by getting into their first relationships, losing their virginity, applying for different colleges, stuff like that. But once you turn 18 everyone chooses to walk down different paths. Or maybe they forage their own ways.

This is where I noticed since graduation, people I used to know started to get engaged. Some got married, others had kids. I was left here baffled. I was so confused. How was it that people my age, in my graduating class, were already doing all this adult stuff?? I felt like I was still a child. I could practically still be 4 years old telling my mom and dad that I wanted to be a princess when I grow up. How was it that other people were already so mature? Mature enough to have children!!! But then I remembered what my mom told me. Everyone goes through this. You turn 18 and some people you used to know become parents, some become married, some go down worse paths and get sent to jail, or sadly pass away. After you turn 18 everyone has their own timelines and understandings of when they want to hit these big life milestones.

So we graduated. We turned 18. And we all split off onto different paths. I also see some old friends starting businesses or getting into the graduate schools of their dreams. Some people are accomplishing so many amazing things career wise or educationally. It became hard comparing myself to others and accepting that we were all on different paths. I did ask myself am I supposed to be ready to be engaged right now? Should I apply to graduate schools? What am I doing??? Why haven't I started a business already like I thought I would have when I was 17?? Lemme tell you, nothing I thought I would be doing now when I was 17 happened. So much changed and that is because when everyone entered into the big wide world and started their lives we all changed.

I feel like I have changed so much since I left Texas. I think about my old friends often and about how if we hung out today they may not recognize the person I am now. I would not know them either. We all split and started doing our own things. Becoming our own people. And that, like Uzi said, is just the way life goes. I used to think I'd be friends with some people forever. Now I look at their lives from afar and understand why that's just not realistic. We were all clouded by our teenage optimism and ignorance.

I still hold on to some basic plans. I don't expect to be married before 26-27 and I definitely don't expect to have kids prior to 28. This blog will someday document that part of my timeline though. We will see how accurately my plans turn out. By the time I am having kids, some of my former class mates will have 10 year old children. That blows my mind. But it is okay. I am starting to accept the fact that we all chose different paths and that some people fast tracked their timeline compared to mine. At the end of the day, we will all end up in the same place just like we started in the same place.