Playing ‘catch-up’ with inexperience

Junette Reyes / Editor-in-Chief 

Recently having turned 22 years old, I look back on how far I’ve come and how much I’ve done over the years, something that has become a conscious habit with every year I’ve aged since 18. Having come this far has been no great feat, as I have lived but a mere portion of the entirety of my expected lifetime.

And still I look back at my life up until this point with a hint of disappointment as well as uncertainty for my future when I realize how inexperienced I am in life, or as someone recently said to me, how unexposed I am.

With every year that passes by, I jokingly state that I’ll forever be “x” age, claiming that I’ll start lying about my age as early as possible. Although I initially mean it as a joke, a small part of me genuinely fears growing older because of this sense of inexperience.

Admittedly, this inexperience is all to the standards held in my own head in terms of what I think I should have accomplished by now. But they are standards that I create by comparing my experience to what is presented to me socially.

My first mistake, of course, is to compare my experience to anyone else’s.

Still, I do it.

I am inexperienced because I am still dependent of my parents and live with them at the age of 22 when the both of them became independent individuals around the same age, if not earlier. I am inexperienced because I still have to depend on others for means of transportation, although I’m working on changing that. I am inexperienced because, up until this point, I never knew what it meant to work for a paycheck. I am inexperienced because my daily activities usually don’t occur beyond my home and campus. I am inexperienced because I have yet to be a part of a serious relationship with a significant other.

There is so much more I can say in regards to my inexperience, some of which I’m too ashamed to even mention. A lot of it has been due to my upbringing, one that can be called a privileged, yet sheltered one. It is only now at 22 that I’m trying to catch up with everything and assert myself as an independent individual that is constantly learning from the ups and downs that life has to offer. I’m just afraid that having taken so long to get to this point means I’ll never be quite as experienced as I should be.

I’m afraid that if anything I’ve expected to happen at this point still hasn’t happened yet, then it never will. Which is why come the next birthday, I’ll forever be 22.

junette.reyes@fiusm.com