Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!
I have 48 hours left of being 23 years old. I swear the years go by faster as they come; I was just 21 not too long ago. Being 23 wasn’t easy on me; it has been one of the more difficult years since… like, 19. 23 was that year that I don’t mind giving up because it simply wasn’t a good one for me. Even though I say that I still appreciate seeing another year and experienced being 23, it was that year that I look back on and feel like I learned a lot about myself and about life. Prior to 23, I had this idea on the world that everything was good and no harm can come my way if I had everything under control. I was always considered naive, innocent, and sometimes even stupid for thinking that everything could be perfect. I thought I dropped that mindset when I was in my late-teens, but I feel like that’s something I was still carrying around with me years after.
23 taught me that life doesn’t wait for anyone. Life will continue to go on whether you’re upset or not, not everything in this world is what it seems, and sometimes you have to get uncomfortable to understand the reality of life.
23 was the year of self-awareness.
Prior to this year, I had a clear understanding of the positives in my personality. I knew the positive things that made me “Liz”, but I always would try to push the negatives under the rug so that I was never a “negative” thing. I always told myself that I was not my negatives, and 23 taught me that I am not only my positives either. I am a control freak. I am a perfectionist. I am a narcissist when I feel offended. I have social anxiety. I forget important things when I’m nervous. I try to hurt people when they hurt me first. I have a hard time expressing what I’m thinking or feeling because I’ll feel like a burden. I avoid confrontation like the plague. I am all of these things because I know I am not perfect, but I also know I am not fully any of these things. 23 showed me these things and taught me how to acknowledge these negative traits about myself without feeling resentment towards myself. 23 taught me that the negatives balance out the positives, and if there is a negative I necessarily don’t like, then I have the power to change it.
23 showed me how to recognize and be familiar with the things about myself that I neglected for so many years. It left me uncomfortable, depressed, and uncertain about where I was supposed to go and how to get there. 23 showed me the ugly things life can be if you’re oblivious to the negatives. 23 also showed me that the negatives in life are not meant to be fixed, but they are meant to show you that life is about balance. Even if 23 wasn’t my year of growth in the way I wanted it to be, it still showed me growth; growth that I needed to move forward.
-Liz. (:
Letters From Liz. 