Cross the Lines You Drew

It's no surprise that there are multiple ways that people handle the truth. As I've gotten older, I've found it far more difficult to acknowledge the harder truths in life-- so much so that for a while, I got really good at pretending they didn't even exist. My family couldn't be touched by death, loss, disappointment, failure, and so on. I quickly found between my senior year of high school and the end of my freshman year of college that that was just not the case. I was extremely lucky, but my family wasn't untouchable.

It's been two and a half years since I really first realized that life was going to have major ups and downs, and yet I'm still just barely learning how I handle the ups and downs--especially the big, life-changing ones. Surprise, surprise! I'm not so good at it. If there is anything that triggers my anxiety like no other, it's change. Can you see how that's not so convenient when you're a 20 year old one year away from graduating college?

Life is messy.

I was (of course) looking on Pinterest for inspiration when it came to writing this post. I knew that I wanted to write it, but I wasn't quite sure how to articulate how I was feeling in words. I came across this quote from Grey's Anatomy's Meredith Grey:

"At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don't keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy, that's how we're made. So, you can waste your life drawing lines. Or, you can live your life crossing them."

I know exactly why the quote resonated with me. When I'm afraid of something, particularly things that are, in fact, inevitable (read: growing up), I become extremely, and I mean extremely, good at putting up walls and drawing those lines that I know will protect me. And while in the past year I've gotten much better at crossing the lines that I once drew for myself, I still struggle immensely with it.

Being 20 has been a really interesting experience for me thus far. It's like when you turn 20 you think you can say, "I'm in my twenties now. I've obviously got my sh** together." But that's the biggest joke you can tell yourself. I have friends who are 23, 24 now (which surprises me because sometimes I still feel like the 16 year-old high school junior who thought being 18 meant you were old). The friends I have who are older than me have shown me what it means to work hard, what life after college really looks like (it's not all fun and games, and the men still stink [although that's not always the case], you probably won't like your first job [and you're extremely lucky if you do...], and so on and so forth.)

The thing I'm most afraid of right now is growing up, living on my own, leaving home. The weirdest part of it all is that I know I'm ready, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm still basically in shock that I'm now a senior in college. If there's anything you take away from this post though, remember what I'm going to say next.

The most important thing I've learned in the past four years is to cross the lines that your younger self drew for you. If you don't do this, you'll never grow.

It's so not easy. I still struggle with it everyday-- taking chances and risks that I know will better myself. But every time I've crossed a line that in the past I never would have even tiptoed upon, well, I've thanked myself for being brave enough to do it.

Don't ever draw a line in permanent ink, one day you just may want to erase it.

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