"I told them I wanted to be a cake... and so I did!"
As children, we've probably heard this question many times. Maybe from a little old lady standing in line at the cashier behind our Mother to pay for biscuits and milk, or maybe from the scary doctor who turned out to be a really nice guy who gave us candy for being so brave.
But none of it came with pressure or doubt. There was not a single day where I thought to myself that I could not do these amazing things I had planned. If other people could do it - and were doing it - of course I could do it too!
Yet somehow along the way I lost that fierceness, most likely along with my innocence. I could go on and try to blame the world for this. I could blame it for being so ripe with the reality that I was familiar with but had not gotten acquainted to yet when I was still enjoying my Dr. Seuss books. But I can't, because that's just how the way things go. The older I get the more aspects of life tell me that I have responsibilities to tend to. The more we grow up, the more we understand things about the world that we didn't understand or care about when we were young. Nobody told us that horses are expensive and cowboy get-ups look rediculous after we've said we want to be a cowboy and spend life lassoing bad guys up. None of that biting reality sensibility. The biggest crisis of our days was probably our easy-bake oven not working right, and as far as we were concerned our magic princess wand could work.
What I've learned after reaching my 20s is that I'm more than 15 years older but I have become less confident in my future than when I was 5 years old. Just because you've done your time with school doesn't make you the master of life and the beholder of its secrets. Just because you're dealing with things like money and jobs doesn't make you the zen master of stability and independence. Quite the contrary, if I had to I'd label the 20s as "The Lost Days". Yeah, that label was inspired from the Emily Strange books but that doesn't make it any less true.
I've been on this earth for 22 years now and I still have so many questions about the world. Forget the world, let's talk about my life! What do I want to do? What should I do? What do I plan on doing? Unfortunately, these questions haunt me on a daily basis like a cake haunts fat people on diet. That little question has evolved some ("What do you want to be now that you're done with college?") and the people who ask the question have changed (no more friendly old ladies up for a chitchat because I'm a cutie pie - they've been replaced with concerned parents and not-quite-as-but-still-as concerned relatives), and most importantly, the answer has also changed its tune :
"I really don't know yet. But I'm figuring it out."
And I also learned that's okay.
x Natasha
