I spent my adolescence in a perpetual state of anticipation. I twiddled my thumbs waiting for holidays, dances, birthdays, movies, Fridays, and of course, my eighteenth birthday. “Freedom” was the correlation I made with the number eighteen, and each day that passed I counted as only one day closer to it.
I dreamt of my driver’s license, my first car, my first boyfriend, my homecomings and proms and winter formals yet to come, as well as walking across the stage at my own graduation, without taking the time to enjoy what was going on around me at the time.
I toyed with the idea of my future, a broad concept I didn’t really understand. I bounced between careers without weighing the options, considering all the details, and preparing a resume. Options were vast, endless, and what I believed to be right within my grasp.
In daydreams I traveled to faraway places and walked the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, and London without calculating travel distances, gas prices, rental car fees, and living expenses.
My veins coursed with the excitement at the thought of that pivotal day when I would cross the threshold from a normal seventeen-year-old into the realm of adulthood. I fantasized about being in a brand new room and making brand new friends underneath a brand new skyline. I imagined my first day at college, and the new people I would meet around campus every day. Around me, days came and went fleetingly, remaining as nothing more than a picture in the yearbook or a number on the calendar.
Until reality began to seep through the cracks of the thick façade I built and crumbled it into a smoldering pile of regret. As my eighteenth birthday and graduation quickly approaches I am faced with the urge to run from it rather than embrace the terrifying concept known as “freedom.”
“Freedom,” I used to think, meant not having a curfew, not having to draw up an itinerary and have it approved by my parents before going out for the evening. Now I realize it’s more closely defined by the incredibly terrifying responsibility of being in charge of your own life without having the luxury of having someone worry about you coming home every night. “Freedom,” I associated with being free from the bounds of high school classes and the homework that comes along with them. Now I am becoming frighteningly aware of the fact that high school is almost as easy as it gets.
Things I couldn’t wait to be over are suddenly becoming things I will miss. The idea of tossing around career options has become stressful and disheartening. Moving away is something I am beginning to dread.
I’m overwhelmed by college brochures, class rankings, financial packages and statistics. I can mark the remaining days of my life as I know it on the calendar. One more Maryland snow out my bedroom window, one more spring until I graduate, and it’s all over.
Leaving the bedroom I’ve lived for in the past eighteen years vacant and crowding my things into a new dorm with a stranger. “Freedom.” Only speaking to my family through faltering telephone calls during brief breaks in my busy schedule. “Freedom.” Wiping off counters, scribbling down orders and stuffing whatever income I make into a piggy bank in a pathetic attempt to make a dent in my college loans. “Freedom.”
Only now I realize how naive I was. I’m going to miss Friday night football and the parking lot on weekdays after dismissal. My warm, cozy bedroom, my house, my creaky floorboards and leaky faucets. I will regret not memorizing the precise tone and pitch of my mother’s voice lulling me awake in the morning and I will miss her bringing me hot coffee to kiss my sleepy lips awake. I will yearn for a drive along the same country roads I’ve grown to know like the back of my hand. I will miss things I didn’t even realize were there until they weren’t anymore.
I am now realizing I will leave behind my classmates, some of whom I’ve known since pre-school, and I won’t see half of them ever again. I once used to feed off of the thought of having a new start and leaving everyone behind, and now it brings up a lump in my throat and a stinging behind my eyes.
Maybe that’s what I will miss the most is the familiarity of my classmates that I took for granted. The understanding that although we may not be friends, we’ve grown to know each other over the years, watched each other laugh and cry and silently agreed that we would all get through it together somehow. We grew up together, and in all my big plans for “growing up.” I didn’t account for growing apart.
In retrospect, I wish I could’ve realized how absolutely beautiful this place it that I was lucky enough to call my home. I would’ve taken longer looks at the sunset outside my bedroom window. I would’ve smiled at the sound of the church bells on Sunday afternoons. I would’ve stuffed the college brochures in the trash and gone for a drive with my friends had I known that “freedom” wasn’t at all what I expected.
