It's impossible to know how you have changed without a means of comparison. I mean, you can feel it within yourself, but it cannot be outwardly expressed. You can say you've matured, that you are an adult, that you are more responsible, but in the end it is our actions that determine whether or not this is true.
I'm a pretty careless driver. I have been since October 1st, 2013 - the day I got my license and discovered freedom. There is no feeling that compares to the first time you drive without a parent or legal driver over the age of 21 in the passenger seat next to you. You are totally in control. You pick the music, the volume, the speed, the direction. All of the power is in your hands. At 16, this realization is the most exciting thing since push-up bras. At 19, it's utterly daunting.
I've been stewing and thinking and starting and stopping trying to figure out how I am going to articulate to the world what my first year of college was: it took me going on an ice cream run to Stewart's last night to understand for myself. My first year of college was the slow destruction of my lead foot. And man did I ever have a lead foot. I never sped intentionally, but I was just prone to putting a little too much pressure on the pedal. Like I said, lead foot. But yesterday I was driving home, a half gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream riding shot gun, when I got to the hill before my house that I rarely, if ever, drove the speed limit on in high school. It's a HUGE hill, can you blame me? Usually about half way down I give a quick glance to the speedometer just to make sure I'm not breaking any records or leaving skid marks behind me, and when I did, I was surprised to find that I was going the speed limit. Even more surprised to realize this is not the first time I have noticed this since being home. And then all the fragments of this past year that I have saved as drafts and half written stories came together. This past year had changed something so close to my core that I no longer have a lead foot. Me, lead-footless! It made me less reckless, it gave me goals, it tore down my walls and taught me to communicate with the people I love. It taught me to register the fact that I love people, and they, me.
This past year grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and forced me to grow up. From the very first night, when my roommate and I awkwardly approached two other girls and gently bullied them into being our friends by making them share their frisbee full of home fries with us because I thought I was going to be friendless, to the first week when I had to get a job all on my own without any connections or references, to the third month when I missed my parents so much it made my gut hurt and I teared up nearly every time I talked to them. I learned that I owe every part of me who ever did anything right and well to them, and that I take them far too for granted. But I never wanted to be the girl that was homesick, and I wasn't homesick - I've never been homesick. My home is where the people I love are. It's hard to miss a place that is scattered across the country, occasionally the world. Life is about people. This I have learned.
I found my people this year. I found them asleep four feet away from me, at midnight breakfasts, in elevators, in t-shirts of my favorite bands, in coffee shops, in recruitment shirts, and on the streets of Tenleytown at 3am. These are the people that I surround myself with, every waking moment. These are the people I so badly did not want to leave two weeks ago. They are the reason I will go back.
They make me laugh until I cry, they know my coffee order, they laugh at my bad jokes, they accept me for my lack of cleanliness and my inability to care for dairy products. They have assessed the severity of my financial incompetence and chosen to keep me around any way. They give me hell and make me want to tear my eyelashes off sometimes, but they make me rational and real. They pull me out of my head: they make me a better person. They give me a reason to go the speed limit.
When it hit me this year that all of the power was in my hands, I was far less excited than I was three years ago. I wanted to crawl into a hole, burn all documentation that said I was over 18, and call my parents. But at some point I registered a fact that I had always known; there were people in this world, people in my classes, who had been making their own adult decisions since they were 14, some younger. I knew that if they were fine, I would be too. I saw that I had all the tools I needed to be responsible, I just had to put them into effect. I looked around at my people, how out of sync I had fallen, how off balance I felt. I pulled myself together, pulled my GPA back to it's minimum requirement, and pulled myself back to the center.
After my first semester, I was too comfortable. I was so confident and so, so happy. I thought that I had found myself, so I didn't need to look anywhere else. Turns out the only place I was looking up my ass, because that's where my head was. It is important to be happy with yourself, and I still am so happy believe me, but life is about people. This is the thing that really forced me to grow up. Life is about people. The people who matter, the ones I don't want to lose. It's about my parents- living a life that will have my mom telling all her friends about my latest news and doing so in a way that will make my dad proud, in that better-when-it's-hand-written-than-said kind of way. I need to work hard so that I can make enough money to buy my sister the boat I promised her so we can actually spend quality time together as adults (or fake adults because we're never growing up, right?). It's about the friends who stand by while you flounder a bit, but accept you right back when you think you've figured it all out again. If you have anyone, or anything at all that keeps you grounded, don't you dare take it for granted.
Life is about the people who reach deep into your core, and over the course of a few months, a year, a lifetime, chip and corrode and corrupt and deteriorate and destroy your inherent lead foot. My first year of college not only taught me this, but to let them.
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