It's been a while, and a lot has changed. You can read as many 20-something books to help walk you through the stage of life, but it's not until you're living it that it starts to make sense.
Research shows that you change the most in your early 20's. You discover more of who you are, what you want, and what you want your life to look like. I guess when you surround yourself with other 20-somethings, the chances of changing and growing apart from each other are pretty high. Sometimes the people you thought would be around forever, the people you never pictured losing touch with, can be the people you grow apart from the most. The important thing through all the changes, is to not lose sight of yourself. With everyone wandering around trying to figure out what they want, it's important to remember that you also must figure out what you want and not just conform to the things that others deem important. These can be simple things, like the music you like or the place you'd prefer to hang out on a Friday night, to what you want out of a career and how you see your future self (married or single, kids or no kids, etc.). Sometimes the simple things can make you think the compatibility is outstanding, but when you look closer, the lifetime aspirations create too big of a difference to keep people in your life.
That decision is hard. It's not a natural chapter of life like graduating high school knowing next comes college, or graduating college and knowing the real world comes next, or even researching job options to see what comes next. It's an unnatural change that you can't prepare yourself for because the people that matter to you most aren't the people you think about leaving. But after long talks, when you've said all there is to say, you have to walk away. There's a low moment in that where you don't think you'll ever recover and you can't picture your life without that person and you run through any compromise you can to see if there was a loop hole you missed. And in that low, you find there wasn't something missed. It was what it was and you had to make the decision. So you brush yourself off and start looking for what's next in your life.
You find new friends. New things that matter to you because you had forgotten that you could have your own interests. You search harder to find what you want. You evaluate yourself so you remember and discover just who you are and what matters to you most. You see what you had given up and bask in ease of taking care of yourself. There may be some guilt with being OK, with admitting you knew things weren't working and you had to move on. But the new people and the new things you surround yourself with help remind you that that is what you are supposed to do and you don't have to hurt longer simply because you think you should.
Then you are grateful you had been searching for something new before life's major curve ball. And there's one friend you confide in that opens the door to new possibilities. It's amazing how someone you always knew would be one of the most influential people in your life suddenly helps you grasp on to what you forgot mattered to you. They support your decisions in ways that others can't comprehend.
The 20-something stage is hard to swallow, and when you have a salaried, benefited career opportunity, most others in your stage of life would learn to cope (or more accurately, bitch) at the cubicle and spend the hard earned money at the bars over the weekend. That's never been my scene and I'm finding comfort with the 30-something's I've found that really interest me more than the 20-something's that really don't know what's going on. Hindsight is 20/20 and their experiences are great lessons and encouragement for me to really discover what I want and to go after it while I can.
I'm at a new stage where I have nothing tying me down so I'm taking advantage of the opportunities and am leaving my cubicle to head back to the pool. I will be working with Cheyenne Mountain Aquatics coaching the newer kids on the team and helping to build and develop the team's swim lesson program so we can grow in size along with skill. It's bitter sweet to be leaving my new friends and my first home that I could call my own, but I'm just happy. Sure, living in the parent's basement and scraping my pennies together to try and do anything will be a bit of an adjustment, but there's very little I'm not excited for right now. The post-change me is a very happy person that I forgot had existed. I never would have thought the people that mattered to me most were holding me back, I still don't think they were in that stage, but the new freedom of discovering me has been wonderful and I can't wait to see what's next.
This new chapter, this new stage, it all seems to be falling together and I can't get over it.
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