Am I as old as I feel?
I am 25 years old with the experiences of an 80 year old. Most people will never have the walk the path I’ve walked until they are old and gray, but God chose me to go through this season for a purpose. Once the dust settled, I felt this resurgence of my youth flow through my veins. I want to be adventuresome and completely reckless. I want to embrace nature. Conquer the world. I feel an intense desire to play paintball and go fishing and go water tubing. I want to go rock climbing and swim with manatees. I want to go to concerts and enjoy parties.
So, I sit back and really have to ask myself am I really in denial about myself? I think that this new spirit to live of mine is really me trying to convince others and myself that I’m not really as old as I feel. Because when everyone leaves the house and I’m left alone to me and my thoughts, I feel like an old, gray-haired woman living in a one-bedroom house with 50 cats. Maybe not cats. But you get the picture. I feel like my bones are breaking and I’m slowly fading away and if I don’t do something right now, I will blow away with the wind.
I want so desperately not to feel like I am 100 years old. I want to feel my age. But I don’t. I feel like when I go to these concerts with people who aren’t that much younger than me, everyone around me is staring and thinking to themselves, “why is that old lady hanging out with those kids?” My friends reassure me that I’m not crazy, and I’m not old, but I can’t deny this overwhelming feeling I have. Everyone my age has settled down, gotten married, started families, but I have been thrown to the other end of the spectrum against my will and have been forced to go through the whole process once again.
And I’m learning a few surprising things about myself. Seriously, things I never realized about me.
a) I am a nature born social director. Amanda said it best. I can through together a party in no time and it is a fun time. I thrive on having as many random people around me as I can and doing the most random activities possible. From living room soccer to dance parties to cookouts, I love making people happy and connecting them with others.
b) My eyes are actually blue. Okay, let me go into that a little further. I know my eyes are blue, I’ve known that since I was, what 2? But, never in my life have so many people pointed out that my eyes are insanely blue. I think its because for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel the whole weight of the world on my shoulders and I feel…happy.
c) I don’t know who I am attracted to or not. This may sound silly, but for me this is something I really didn’t know about me. I never dated and Shannon was the first person to ever show interest in me, now when I am surrounded by single men, I really don’t know if I am actually attracted to them. I think about when I was younger and how I “fell in love” all the time with people, and now I constantly see beautiful qualities in several of my guy friends, but when it boils down to it, I don’t know if I could honestly say if I am attracted to any of them. I am all for giving everyone a shot, but I don’t really know if I am really attracted to any of them. I have thought that I am, but now I don’t really know. I ever took time to really pray about this subject Sunday, I asked God to shine a light into my heart and dissolve the confusion.
Trust me when I say that when you go through a traumatic life situation, all of the sudden you are put in a room by yourself and you have to re-meet and get to know who you really are. You have to embrace yourself, love yourself, and pray God helps others love you back through the transition. God is loving me through this season and putting amazing friends in my path to love me also. I feel like a crazy woman sometimes being torn apart from the inside, but at the end of the day, I know God’s making a way.