Embracing Adulthood: Navigating the Journey Beyond Miss 20-Something

Now that I’m in my twenties, I can’t help but reflect on the last few years of my life. Looking back at 18, my sense of self was sort of lost. It was a random Wednesday afternoon when I sat with my thoughts about how much I’ve grown in the last few years. On a drive back home, I spoke with my mom about how my junior year was going. And of course, I told her all about the stresses of graduation around the corner

and keeping up with classes, the whole nine. In the midst of my rant, I realized that my life was so much more different than what I expected at 18.

 

In Social Psych, we learned about how our sense of self is constantly developing and changing as we live and grow. Our sense of self can be defined through our social identities, successes and failures, our relationships, and more. Our daily experiences shape our outlooks on life and change how we perceive things and the others around us!

 

 During my first two years of college, I had a lot of moments when it seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I still failed. When I talked to my mom, she used to ask me: “Who are you?”. I would start listing off anything I could think of. I’m an older sister, a daughter, a friend, and a student. And I used to think to myself, why does it matter? I mean, I’m crying every other day and she’s asking some random question as if she hasn’t known me my whole life. Looking back, I can be grateful and laugh at my silliness. But it got me thinking—I had no idea who I was.

 

At 18, I looked at myself through such a narrow lens. I thought my family expected me to be a good daughter and sister so that’s who I was. My teachers expected me to be a good student so that’s who I was (or what I tried to be). My friends expected me to be a good listener, kind, a good friend—and so I was.

 

The self-schemas by which I defined myself were so restrictive that when I failed to live up to these expectations, I spiraled into depressive episodes. When I think about it now, I think that I had an external locus control—I thought I had no control over my life outcomes, and no matter the choices I made, they would just be in vain.

 

After about two years, you get a little discouraged. You may ask, “Am I making the right decisions?” I began displaying the impact bias, which describes the “I’ll never get over this!” feeling. The impact bias is our tendency to overestimate the impact events will have on us. For some time, I couldn’t see past 18. But how do we overcome these feelings? Will you ever truly know who you are? Is it a bad thing?

Something that helped me get over this hump, was accepting my failures and shortcomings. I think all along I knew I would fail because it's natural, but I guess I never came to terms with it. There’s a lot less I knew at 18 than I do at 20, and I like that. I know now that I’m not the expectations of the people around me. Practicing humility and letting go of the shame of being young and imperfect—and truly practicing—gives you a sort of freedom from social comparison and its constraints. But most importantly, I know that it’s “okay” to not know what my next move is. I don’t know what I’m going to wear tomorrow, or how I'll do my hair, or even what my life will look like a year from now. I think the joy of now being in my 20s is, actually, the ‘not knowing’ part. Accepting the growing pains makes it easier to look back at those scars because they make me who I am. What I can say is that I am not what everyone “expects” of me—sometimes I’m not even who I expect. But I am who I am despite them.