When I was little, I believed my life would begin the day I turned 16. I thought I would have everything figured out. Watching coming-of-age movies, I saw an example of what my life would soon become. I thought that each problem that arose in my life would be tied up with a neat little bow within a few days, but in reality, sixteen isn’t so pretty.
According to my younger self, my entire life should already be perfectly outlined in a composition journal on the desk in my bedroom. Despite the life that I created in my head, it seems that those plans expired the day I turned sixteen. I barely know what college I want to attend in two years, and there is a new requirement each week of what I need to know, how many extracurricular activities to be involved with, and the grades required to make it into a halfway decent university.
I don’t have time for the life-changing adventures that I thought my teenage years would bring. In lieu of the grandeur that books and movies depicted as daily life, sixteen has instead brought new responsibilities. I now find myself spending the majority of my time doing homework, taking naps when possible, and attending endless evening rehearsals.
I wish that my life were like the coming-of-age films that I loved as a kid, but those didn’t take into account that there would be a global pandemic in middle school or that my sister would get sick and flip my family upside down.
The path to sixteen wasn’t supposed to be as hard as it was. It wasn’t supposed to involve visiting my family in hospitals or getting bullied in school at thirteen. The path to sixteen was supposed to be as pretty as a lane lined by cherry blossoms in spring, but instead, I was met with a frigid walk through the woods lined by barren trees with the occasional blossom of a marigold. The infrequency of the flowers made me appreciate their beauty more than I would in a field full of them, just like I now appreciate the time with friends and family without the difficulty of building quality time into my schedule.
Although my life isn’t perfectly outlined in a composition journal like my younger self wanted, my life is constantly changing and shifting as I grow and as people come in and out of it. The plans that I had made for my life didn’t come about sixteen, so now it’s time for me to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life.
I know that my life will change a lot over the next couple of years as I leave high school behind and enter adulthood. My life doesn’t look like what the movies made me expect, but it is beautiful and ever-changing; I wouldn’t trade it for the world, let alone a life where all of my problems are wrapped up into perfect little bows.
