Where Did Life Go?!

Image: here

So prior to yesterday, the question in the title never really crossed my mind; not after graduating high school, not after moving into my first college dorm, never. Yesterday and today two of my closest friends celebrated their 20th birthdays. Cue the late night barely-a-quarter-life crises. It finally hit me after realizing that everyone I know is entering their twenties...we're freaking adults, man! Now I still have quite a bit of time left to go before I cross into the next decade of my life but I still can't help but be a little bit taken by surprise at how quickly time seems to have passed.

I remember being in elementary and middle school with one of these girls and seeing each other everyday and going through all these really juvenile problems together. Last night, we were in our own dorms, on different college campuses, four hours away from each other still talking about our problems but with computer screens between us. We talked for hours about financial aid problems, crazy emotional guy problems, and other things that all of a sudden felt very grown up and very strange to us. I have now become very aware of life's little gray area where we are currently located.

In cultural anthropology we learned the term liminality. Liminality typically occurs in a cultural right of passage ritual; it is that step between the subjects starting social status and their new place in society. College is liminal. We aren’t the young guns who were a little sheltered, but we are also not completely cut loose and left alone to provide for ourselves and others yet. There are different rules that apply to us as we are learning how to be adults  in our specific society.

So I have nine months until I leave my teenage years and childhood behind me and really enter the age of adulthood. Luckily I have all these friends I can live through who are testing the waters for me, right? I plan on spending these last months making an effort--toward everything that’s coming at me in my in the rest of my nineteenth year as I enter into the twentieth year: applying for more scholarships to alleviate those financial aid problems, getting to know myself before concerning myself with others to maybe lessen some of those guy problems, and of course having fun to cure myself of my stress problem. After this post, I am still asking myself that question up there…where did life go? But there’s less panic now. Now it is peaceful realization and welcome toward the coming years.

<3 Ashley

Anyone else a little surprised at how fast time truly flies?