Growing Up

While sitting at my gate, patiently awaiting my flight to NYC, I looked up to my surprise to see a little girl looking at me in awe, waving eagerly. I gave her a big smile and wave back, and couldn’t help but think about what was going through her mind. I began to think of how much time has passed since I too was that same little girl, looking at the older girl at the airport wearing pink (obviously I never go to the airport NOT dressed in all pink ;) ) in awe as well. Her hopeful eyes brought feelings of nostalgia as well as excitement to my heart. On one end, I felt so old. How is it that I am pretty much finished with my childhood and moving on to the real world? SCARY. How is it that all of this time has gone by in a blink of an eye? There’s a part of me that wishes nothing more than to go back to that age, so innocent and starry eyed, a whole world ahead of me. But as I prepare for one of my first big internships in a big city, I realize I still do have the world ahead of me. It was in that moment, I understood that as you get older, you always have a whole world ahead of you; that world just grows and grows as you experience more people, places, and moments.

This little girl may be taking her first trip to New York City, seeing Times Square and the glittery department stores for the first time. This will be a shock to her tiny world of course, and will expand her knowledge of what the bigger world has to offer her. Here I am, making maybe my 40th trip to New York City, and I feel the same level of excitement as her. My world is growing too. Yes, I’ve already seen the sights and walked the streets, but this time I was doing it for real, real life style, living out the dream I have had since I was her age. This moment was reassuring for me, as someone who feels scared and sad about the idea of growing up. I was finally beginning to feel excited about the idea of moving on to bigger things. I know my time as the little girl has come and go, but my time as a big girl has only just begun, and for the first time I felt ready to accept that.

As I still sit at the gate, delayed for 3 hours (BOOOO), I can’t help but think about the concept of the “in between” that goes along with growing up as well. Here I am, currently, at a 3-hour standstill, an “in between” from my relatively uneventful life in my hometown to what is about to be the summer of excitement in my dream town. It is during these moments that I truly start to think about how fast life is moving and how hard transitioning can be. Before this short “in between”, I was stuck in a different “in between”; the period that I was home after finishing my junior year of college and before I went to work in NYC. These brief periods of time have always been hard for me. I am very lucky to be able to go to school in a different city than the one I grew up in, but this also comes along with a constant whirlwind of emotions. I especially notice them during this in between period. Driving along the roads that once felt so familiar all of the sudden felt somewhat foreign to me. The place that I had called home for 18 years all of the sudden didn’t quite feel like home. That can be a really scary concept to grasp, the concept of moving on. As I write this, a part of me wants to stay in the “in between forever”, in home in my bed watching Netflix, in the comfort zone that exists before the start of something new. But, I realize that these “in betweens” aren’t really real life, and that the stage at the other end of them is waiting. My world is getting bigger and bigger and there’s nothing that I can do to stop it.

I look back to the little girl, still looking at me with a big smile on her face. She reminds me of the fire I have in my heart to fulfill those dreams that maybe she has in hers. She brings me back to gratitude for the experiences that I have had from her age on that have led me to be ready to get on this plane. She gives me the confidence to move on from this “in between.” I feel prepared and excited to grow with my world and grow with the new opportunities coming my way. Maybe growing up isn’t SO bad :).

xoxo, Soco <3