The Harsh Reality of Growing Up

I’m scared. 

I’ve floated through life always choosing the safest options. 

I’ve gone from school to college and the next step is university. 

I’ve avoided relationships out of fear of getting my heart broken, knowing that loving anyone but myself is a dangerous game. 

I have the next three years of my life planned out but after my education is over and done with, what’s left? I’ll have myself and a degree. There is no absolute certainty that my degree will land me a job which supports me financially, let alone someone else. 

What if I never find love? Maybe not even love, maybe there will be a lack of romantic partners entirely. 

Will I still be friends with the people I hold close to my heart today? 

I’m going to be thrown in at the deep end, unsure if I’ll ever have the life I’ve been holding out hope for since I was a little girl. 

I want the whole cliche soulmate, marriage and babies thing. I want to teach tiny versions of myself all the things that I had to find out on my own. I want to watch them grow up and have a life that allows them to grow as individuals and create the life they dream of, feeling safe in the knowledge that they have parents who love them unconditionally. 

I want to wake up in my husband’s arms every morning, feeling just as safe as I’ve felt for the last eighteen years of my life. 

It’s that fear of the unknown that leaves me clinging onto every last piece of adolescence that I have left. 

I’m running out of safe options and reality is setting in, clawing at me until I finally have to give in and accept that it’s me against the world.

“Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. " - Donald Miller

I Want To Be Someone Who

I want to be someone who, despite my zodiac, learns to let go of a grudge. 

I want to be someone who is able to let go of toxic people, even if it hurts. 

I want to be someone who knows that it's okay to take time out for myself. 

I want to be someone who knows that i cannot let my downfalls and flaws define me, but also accept that they make me who I am. 

I want to be someone who knows that I am not a burden, even when people make me feel that way. 

I want to be someone who reassures people that they are not a burden either. Everybody needs someone they can rely on to listen without judgement. 

I want to be someone who sees the best in everybody but doesn't allow myself to be blindsided and walked all over. 

I want to be someone who is more trusting of people. Not every single person I encounter is going to treat me the way I was treated before; not everyone is out to get me. 

I want to be someone who knows that not everyone is going to like me and that's okay.

I want to be someone who makes mistakes but accepts that I am human and these mistakes help me grow as a person.

I want to be someone who stands by my morals, even when society tries to change them. 

I want to be someone a seven year old version of myself can be proud of, knowing that I have done and always will do what I feel is right. 

I want to be someone who refuses to apologise for how I feel. 

I want to be someone who never lets their passion be brushed aside. 

I want to be someone who refuses to change for anyone except myself. 

My Biggest Dream

I feel stupid when people ask me that question, and I feel ashamed of the truth so I just say “to be a writer” or even “I don’t know” in the hopes that they’ll get off my back. 

Right now I feel so detached from who I am inside because I can’t have what I want, at least not yet; not at this stage. It’s a simple dream, yet one that seems so far out of reach because it’s years away from my grasp.

I want the whole marriage and babies thing; that’s it. That right there is my dream. I want to find my soulmate and to have a family with him and I want to love and be loved. 

I am a woman, and being a woman is a difficult role in itself. We are expected to have big dreams, and I would likely be looked down on by other women for not wanting more for myself. I want what men historically expect from us. 

I want to raise a happy, healthy and loving family with someone who has the same morals and beliefs and attitudes towards life as me. 

I feel like I was put on this earth to do that. That is going to be my legacy and i am completely okay with that. 

But how can I say that aloud now, at the age of eighteen years old? Nobody will take me seriously. They’ll tell me that I have my whole life ahead of me and that my thirties will be the time to settle down but they don’t get it.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I want what I never had; for my children to have a huge support system. All I had growing up was myself and parents who argued. I will not be that person. I will not give my children that life. 

They deserve more. I deserve more. 

I’m tired of waiting for this dream of mine, though. I’m so sick of being in that in-between stage of being too young to be an adult but too old to be a child. I always thought that my 18th year would be the start of everything but it hasn't lived up to my expectations.

From this day forward I will not feel ashamed of primarily wanting this for myself, love is beautiful in every form it presents itself in and I will take pride in appreciating that. 

“I must bridge the gap between adolescent glitter and mature glow.” - Sylvia Plath