Life after 18: A story of transition from being a teenager to early adulthood.

Life after 18 comes to you like a gush of cold wind right at your face. It might be something you didn’t expect but now you gotta deal with it, face to face. It’s actually something you were not prepared for yet, you were not aware of consequences, you looked at it with hopeful eyes, but then,  now you are just served it on a blingy platter. There are several changes, lots of ups and downs, and a huge fall of responsibilities at once. 

You will automatically make new friends but at the same time you will start to lose friends too- it will look like some betrayed you, some will just go away, some will go to different cities or different colleges where it will be really hard to catch up. It is almost like you are trying to hold on to a fistful of sand with your fingers all clenched. You won’t feel the same bond or same charm as your childhood with your most new friends and that’s completely okay. Bonds change with age and you shall learn to appreciate them all differently. Sure you will now have to make your biggest decisions. Ones that you don’t wish to make but ultimately need to choose one.

You will need to figure out which way you wish to turn your life’s steering wheel. You will be embarrassed to ask for money from your parents even for the basic things like going to eat out with your friends or even tuition fees. You will think twice before even spending your own money. You will realize about your parents and their hardship and you then will decide to figure out any other way to earn money rather than asking them. Want to buy a new dress? You will opt to pay for half of it. You will go and search for different opportunities to earn the least amount of money to cover your personal expenses. 

After many harsh choices and decisions, you will finally choose a college. You will start a new college and it is not necessary that you will have known faces around you so you will be surrounded by many unknown faces, you now are kept in a place where you are supposed to make new friends, but now you have a problem, you have forgotten how to make friends so you will require a little more time to cope up with this “new friendships”. However, after entering college, the memories you are going to make will be narrated for the years to come. You will cherish each and every moment. 

As I have mentioned earlier, you are now in a position to take on many new responsibilities. Your parents suddenly start to treat you as an adult, the world suddenly looks at you from a different perspective, and your parents ask for your opinion on family matters. You suddenly have a strong perception of all the sacrifices they have made for you. You start to think not only about yourself but even about your parents. If you go to any fancy place with your friends, you, there and then wish to bring even your parents to that place. There is wisdom and a certain level of understanding in your advice. Whenever a young sibling comes to you, you guide them and you teach them everything that you wished you learned in your childhood. 

You are going to fall in love. You wish it to be really serious this time. It might work out or most probably not, but you are not afraid to give it a chance so you love anyways. There are no restrictions from anyone except you. 

I am not trying to be all scary about transitions but transitions are the major time when growth happens in life. Believe me, it is not as bad as it sounds. Life after 18 is certainly going to change and you are all of a sudden required to adapt to being an adult and making your share of decisions. You are going to meet new people, lose people from your life. You will surely fall in and out of love. You will watch your friends getting married, having babies, buying a house while you are still stuck in your graduation. Just because your life doesn’t look like everybody else’s doesn’t mean that your life after 18 is a failure, we all have our own timelines for things that are gonna happen. 

It will all happen slowly and certainly and when it does, tighten up your sails as it comes. Because these are some precious days that will stay with you until you die so we could as well make it worth remembering. So this is what I like to whisper to myself when it gets too much “remember Swikriti? live a little more, stress a little less”. 

1 Shares: