I was only 21 when I lost my mother. You could say the early part of my twenties began with grief. The three years that followed were the toughest. I felt broken, unsure of who I was and what I wanted from life. I remember wondering what the point of anything was if she wasn’t here to experience it with me. I was cold, sad and hopeless. It was difficult to imagine a future where I had to make decisions without her.
At the time, I didn’t fully understand it. Grief was only the beginning of what I would have to learn to live with in my twenties. There were other things I would lose, too. Ideas I had about people, love, adulthood and the life I thought I would have by now. Some of these losses were more difficult to make sense of than others.
Grieving the idea that kindness is met with kindness
When you grow up in a loving family, where people care for one another, you become accustomed to kindness. To the idea that this is simply how people treat each other. You learn to be kind, considerate and thoughtful. You assume that, for the most part, these are the values other people live by. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realise that the world is full of people who don’t operate this way.
There are people who hurt others, sometimes without any apparent reason, even when those people have treated them with kindness. This has been one of the most difficult things for me to come to terms with. I find myself reflecting on certain experiences. I try to understand why someone would behave in a certain way. And most times, I simply cannot understand it.
Perhaps part of growing up is realising that not everyone was raised the way you were. Not everyone shares the same values. Perhaps it is accepting that there are things about human behaviour you will never fully understand. I am still battling with wanting to be open and kind without allowing myself to be taken advantage of.
Grieving the life I thought I’d have by now
I love my life, and I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had, the places I’ve lived and the opportunities I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy. I recognise the privilege that I’ve had.
But sometimes, I think about the things I imagined for myself seven years ago. The life I thought I would have by now, the things I thought I would have figured out and the person I imagined I would become.
Some of my goals have happened in ways I could never have predicted. Others are yet to happen.
I’m learning to accept that this is my life now, and that I don’t have to measure it against the expectations of a younger version of myself. She was inexperienced and naive about certain things, as most of us are before life gives us a little more perspective.
I want to permit myself to change my mind, to want different things and to appreciate the life I’m living rather than constantly comparing it to the one I once imagined.
Realising that people have real struggles
As I’ve grown older, I’ve encountered people whose struggles are the kind I once thought only existed in films. Addiction, mental health difficulties, complicated family relationships and circumstances that can fundamentally change the course of someone’s life.
These are things you might never know about a person just by looking at them. Sometimes, it is only when you get close to someone, when they begin to trust you enough to share their story, that you realise how much they’re dealing with.
It has changed the way I look at strangers.
I have become more conscious of the fact that people have silent battles, and that sometimes these struggles influence how they behave, how they respond to others and how they navigate the world.
This doesn’t mean that every hurtful action can be excused, or that understanding someone’s circumstances means accepting how they treat you. But I think it has made me more empathetic.
Grieving the old idea of how the world works
Growing up has made the world feel more complicated, but it has also made me more aware of the humanity we share.
Even the things I enjoyed as a child have taken on new meaning. Songs I sang without understanding their lyrics, or films I watched without understanding the depth of their stories, feel different now. I hear the words and understand the emotions in a way I couldn’t have before. Sometimes, I think this is what growing older feels like. You revisit familiar things with a different understanding of the world, and suddenly, they mean something entirely new.
Grieving my idea of romance
When you’re young, your idea of romance is simple. You meet someone, you fall in love, and you live happily ever after. You imagine that finding the right person is the most important part of the equation, and that the rest will somehow fall into place.
In my twenties, I’ve come to realise that love isn’t always enough. Relationships are far more complicated than I once imagined, and so many other things have to align for two people to build a life together.
You can love someone and still want different things and different ideas about the future. Feelings alone cannot resolve other incompatibilities.
This has been another difficult thing to accept. There is something heartbreaking about understanding that a relationship doesn’t necessarily fail because two people didn’t care enough. Sometimes, the circumstances, the timing or the lives they want to build simply don’t align.
I still believe in romance and in finding someone to share a life with. But I now understand it differently.
And so…towards my late twenties, I became.
I began to think more deliberately about the kind of life I wanted to build. Despite everything I had experienced, I didn’t want grief, disappointment or the uncertainty of life to become the only things that defined my experience of being alive.
I wanted to pay more attention to the good things. Community, family, friendship.
I wanted to create a life that felt full; I began making plans with friends, organising social activities and finding things to do on my own, too. It was important not to keep waiting for the next big thing to happen. I don’t want to postpone happiness until I have a relationship, reach a particular career milestone or figure out exactly where I’m going to be in five years.
I cannot say with certainty where I will be in five or ten years, who will be beside me or what my life will look like. But I have confidence that it’s going to be beautiful.
Forty years from now, when I look back on my life, I hope I will be able to say that I was happy. Not that everything went according to plan, or that I got everything I wanted, but that even when things weren’t perfect, I found ways to enjoy being alive. That I loved people, built meaningful relationships, explored the world, laughed often and allowed myself to experience the good things life had to offer.
In the words of Jhene Aiko,
“It ain’t perfect, but everything’s beautiful”
A few weeks ago, I wrote a short poem that captures how I’ve been feeling. I think I’ll leave it here.
I’m not okay
I don’t think that I’m okay. Most of the time, I feel okay, and sometimes I don’t. I question who I am, and what I desire.
I feel maybe I’m hanging by a thread, about to fall off.
And other times, I feel like I’m on top of the world, happy and content.
Maybe this is a normal human experience, and everything is like a rollercoaster, ups and downs.
But I like it when I’m okay, when I’m happy and content.
When I stare outside my window and smile at the moon.
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