Guess I am 22

After writing a cute message to myself last year on my 21st birthday, I subconsciously told myself it is going to become a tradition of mine to write to myself every birthday. 

If there is one thing we learn, it is that life has more in store for us than we can ever see coming and by the time my 22nd birthday was approaching, I was out of positive things to write. I read a post at the beginning of July, and it led me through the paths of introspection which birthed this piece.

Here is the prompt;

What is *insert subject of study*? 

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21 is a dream.

A dream is often always comforting, starting softly, allowing your mind to tease you of all the things you believe it can accomplish and without warning, everything changes, and you find yourself struggling for breath, trying to find a way to wake up so that you can find respite because what you thought was a dream is a nightmare in disguise.

It started like such a dream, a surprise birthday party by my extended family, cakes, balloons, and everything nice. It went on to the promise of love, the feeling that everything was finally going on the way it is supposed to be until everything came crashing.

It was the entrapment in deep sorrow and loneliness, the one I never expected to face. It is a dream I struggled to wake up from and in the waking, as I tasted a bit of relief, I found out that even though I willed myself awake, I was still trapped.  

From the countless crying spells, the utter confusion of what was going to happen next, the helplessness, to struggling to raise my head above water, 21 was a dream.

21 is moving.

It is moving apartments, sorting my existence into boxes, and figuring out which ones to keep and which one to let go of. It is taking down years of existence and having to set up in someplace new. It is the unfamiliarity with somewhere that is meant to be home, it was earnestly waiting for the walls of my new apartment to feel lived in. It is finding out how long it is going to take and how many people I need to have come in and out before I can say that maybe they are the ones that get to complete what I am looking for.

It is moving out of your comfort zone because it has become too toxic for you to thrive in. 21 is moving away from people and friends you consider home, it is being thrown out into the open because you forgot your keys back in, and they have become unwilling to let you in. Perhaps it is because they believe you need to learn a lesson on the importance of keeping your keys safe, or because they have lost all the patience that they have for having to deal with you always losing your keys.

It is moving and never finding somewhere new to stay because you have become a castaway and have lost the idea of what home is supposed to be like.

21 is loneliness.

What is loneliness?

It is imposed solitude with no endpoint. It is staring at a white wall until your mind turns on itself and sees you as the enemy.  It is your mind questioning all our decisions thus far and giving the verdict that you are not worth anyone or being anywhere.

Loneliness is the inability to fit into the groups you once belonged in, it is the inability to fit into anywhere else. It is feeling lost in a sea of people and feeling lost in your senses. It is allowing your mind to tell you to retreat into yourself and the frustration of being secluded from the outside. 21 is being utterly alone.

21 is mental health awareness. 

It is learning that all my peculiarities are just predisposing factors and my fear of unfamiliar places to the point of remaining in a corner in my room is agoraphobia.

It is learning that even though I have been anxious all my life, it is not the normal level of anxiety. It is learning that I was not having a heart attack and death is not coming anytime soon, instead, my mind had got so sick and decided that maybe forcing me to believe I am about to die will finally get my attention.

It is being unable to sleep the whole of January and crying every night for three months, it is being constantly exhausted and being unable to keep on living.  It is feeling everything and nothing at all times. It is the inability to keep people in my life. It is losing interest in everything that I once found joy in.

It is slowly caving into me and learning to breathe underwater. It is finding out that I can never breathe underwater. It is having to take pills for almost half of the year, and learning how to exist again. It is learning I can never return to who I used to be.

21 is despair.

It is to completely give up on yourself, to lose your sense of being. It is to stop hoping and believing that anything else can happen. It is having no plans and attributing it to being open to new experiences.

It is getting to live with someone and accepting you are meant to be alone because this person was almost perfect, and you still found a way to destroy everything. It is doing everything to prevent a friendship from slipping out of your fingers, and understanding that you would lose more trying to fix it than walking away. It is losing all hope and allowing life’s waves to wash over you. It is submitting to the current so that it washes you away. It is deciding maybe you are better off hopeless, so you give up on expectations and your dreams for more. 

21 is strength.

Not my own obviously but others’ strength.

It is depending on my mother’s strength to continue moving through life and my father’s kind words to accept that it is OK not to be ok. It is the strength of my friends and their confidence that I need not remain in the corner of my room. It is Diri's strength that held me through panic attacks at a new church or after a tiring day at school. 

It is the strength I drew from their confidence that it is OK to take up those roles that I used to play and their gentle nudging that made every new experience not as overwhelming as I would have expected it to be.

21 is companionship.

It is when I prayed for the first time for a companion, for someone to walk and do life with. Loneliness has held me in her grasp for so long that all I want to do is to break free. I realized that I couldn’t do life alone anymore.

21 is feeling so unwelcome amongst my friend group and realizing maybe it is not a bad idea to have something outside of them. So I started making friends, with the backing of SSRIs and therapy and failed more times than I succeeded. I gave up hope and accepted that I was not anyone's home, just a rented apartment, even though I want someone to return to. And I am not quite sure how bad a rented apartment is. 

The only thing I know is that no one stays forever.

21 is letting go.

Letting go as I have learnt is a great act of love, to oneself first and then to a loved one. I am terrible at letting go. It is like ripping oneself apart and still being exposed to the harsh elements. It is finding out that I have lost parts of myself, and the parts I lost are the important pieces of me. It is understanding I would never be complete again, no matter how much I try. It is learning how to live like that, broken and in pieces.

I was told that letting go is a chance at something better, but at 21, something better seems so out of reach.

21 is making friends and still being terrible at it.

It is understanding that friendship takes time, effort, vulnerability, and intentionality. It is knowing that I don’t have what it takes to be a friend, after all, I have already lost a lot of good friends. 

21 is laughter.

The kind that comes from your soul and leaves your bellyaching. 

Laughter is a respite from the sorrow my life has become. It is the brief moment when my head is pulled above water and I can breathe freely. It is choosing to focus on the present moment and allow myself to be light and free. It is my way of clutching to the things that feel so right in a dark season. It is being able to enjoy the moment with friends and family before I am forced back underwater.  

21 is love.

You should know that when I considered love at 21, it was the romantic type of love that I considered. I was not out seeking love like I used to do before this, but the thing was I found myself in love with someone again and there was a chance, the possibility that such love was going to evolve. At the end of the day, the love died because it couldn’t be nurtured. 

The love from your family translated as calls every day from your parents, your brothers’ prayers, your father’s“ I love you”, my cousin's calls and so much more mushy love from my extended family. Then there is the love from my mentors and the members of the community that raised me, the encouragement and the assurance that I am not going through this alone, and they are praying for me and cheering me on. 

The love from friends that check in with me every day, the love that held me through every panic attack, the love that made my group members step outside the Emergency department to support me while I was on the verge of a panic attack during a night call. 

It is the love Diri has for me that made him hold my hand through my recovery process, nudging me to return to a physical church, introducing me to amazing people who in turn went out of their way to shower me with so much love. 

21 is love in the most essential way, the kind of love that guides you through the toughest season, the kind that tells you, you will never walk alone, the type that proves it is easier doing life with someone holding your hands.

21 is acceptance.

Acceptance is when you submit to the way things are now. It is the knowledge that you get to move from here and nowhere else. It is knowing that Life is one day at a time and hope you get to make it to tomorrow. 

Acceptance is the reassurance that so much can be done if only you allow yourself to rest and recuperate, after all running on empty is the best way to burn out completely.

It is slowly acknowledging that some things are better off gone, it is the silent hope that maybe it is going to come back to you, and you get a second chance to make it right. It is picking up yourself, regardless of how impossible that second chance seems. 

It is having to see the man you once loved and have no words to say to him. It is the chance that maybe love costs a lot of things, and you are unable to make a deposit now. It is knowing that one day you get to make that deposit. It is looking forward to tomorrow while actively holding back fear, it is telling yourself that nothing is going to take you out because God isn’t done with you yet. 

The entirety of 21 can be summarized as refining. 

We all know that refining is one of the toughest processes out there, it is taking something that looks one way and making it into a totally different thing, thereby giving it more value. The process of refining, though, is not an easy job. It is casting through the fire, hammering into the desired shape and polishing till it shines, amongst other processes. And if I look back to where I was, the refining becomes a lot more obvious.

I am told that the refining of silver though is a gentler process, it is more deliberate and requires focus. While you can trust other metals to handle the refining process, you need to keep watch over silver because even though it requires a lot of heat, it can be easily destroyed during the refining process if left for too long in the refiner’s fire.

That is what 21 has been, even though I might have gone through the toughest season so far, I am aware of the gentle and deliberate presence of God in my life. And as I turn 22, I pray I don’t resist the refiner’s effort. 

Happy 22nd birthday to me.

With Love,

The Estherian.