Being nineteen is a funny place to be. You seem to be placed in an empty room with no windows or doors because you are no longer a teenager but not quite an adult. I feel like a floater with no true harbor, and the passed few days I have looked back on my high school experience alone and I feel confused.
As a fifteen or sixteen year old, you see college as so far in the future it’s too hard to see yourself there. Instead, you imagine and fantasize about going to the prom with Mr. Prince Charming and wanting to experience having him hold your hand for the first time and what your first kiss will be like. What it will feel like, to be loved and adored by the guy of your dreams.
But, I also saw a clear path for my future. I was going to graduate from a university with a B.A. in English and have my first book published a year after I graduated from school. I would be famous and everyone would read my novels and fall in love with my writing. I would marry a handsome man, and everyone would say that it could only have been fate that brought us together because we were a match made in heaven-- so cliched I know, I know-- but seriously.
Now, I’m not so sure where I see myself, or my future for that matter. At nineteen, I am lost. I wish to find myself, to find how my life influences this world. I don’t feel like the same person I was a year ago when I graduated from high school. Unfortunately, I don’t know what I feel. No one ever warns you about how this time in your life can be messy and confusing. Yes, there are some very fun times, but there is a much bigger part where you are struggling to define yourself in the eyes of everyone else on this planet. Who do I want to be? Is it possible that I could change fate, destiny, and ultimately my future and become the true Alyssa I was born to be? How do I know what I am doing is the best for myself?
There are many times when I feel so alone and distanced from everyone, like I am surrounded by bulletproof glass that I can see out but no one can see me. The “real world”--whatever that really means-- is difficult and you realize things that you wish you didn’t have to realize as a “grown up.” You have to do things that you thought you’d never have to do, and you try your very best to do the things that won’t give your brain a seizure of regret every time you think of your past. But how does one go about changing what you have been for nineteen years?
