20 something files: shedding skin

at sixteen i remember vividly that the only thing i wanted was to find myself. I did so through different activities and through the eyes of others. I looked in books, i looked at the characters on television.... i wrote. All in an attempt to figure out why i felt so strange all of a sudden. To figure out how to move through the motions of growing up while still keeping my values, not getting swept in with the tides of others.


As i approach my 25 th year i see people around me going through the motions of serious relationships, career paths, emotional changes. Doing the same thing.. shedding the skin of there youth in an attempt to get closer to the real being underneath that, the grown up. The more i watch these people, these people who had the same amount of years as i did to grow up, actually grow up, the more confused and broken hearted i actually feel.

Confused because i dont understand the feeling and heart broken because i cant connect. I am that kid my mother warned me about, no, more then that im still a kid.

A twenty somethings decision on certain things reminds me of drinking a glass of water with ice in it.... the begginning is easy, then the obstacles come. Ive always taken a hard look at myself. Sometimes im too hard, but the one thing ive never done is taken a look at the people i allow into my life before. I think i just realized why not, because it hurts to have to say goodbye to things and people who used to be so easy to be around. So many things get in the way, personalities become meshed and past times you shared become past times one is reliving and the other is growing out of.

So you move yourself, to protect yourself mostly and also to thrive as your individual self. No one wants to be judged but this whole process of shedding is to judge. To judge yourself, to judge others, to judge how others judge you. Slowly your landscape changes.... slowly so do you.