A Letter to my Eighteenth

Things fell apart on my eighteenth birthday. Although I was always eager to grow up, the feeling of being 18 is still surreal and honestly scares me. I had imagined several ways to celebrate this commemorative day, including going bungee jumping, traveling to the North Pole and the Sahara Desert, or just dining with my family. But at this moment, I decided to sit down and write this letter to document my short life experience and my desire for a sealed future.

From the older’s saying, age eighteen will be extraordinarily dazzling, but it will also carry impulsive and regrettable moments. Each moment can be a turning point in one’s life journey. Eighteen, a simple but beautiful number, is mixed with the ending of too many long-cherished wishes and the beginning of too many dream journeys. But in the coordinate system of the long journey of life, this year also seems so insignificant and fleeting. 

Theoretically, since the day I was born, the earth has revolved around the sun 18 times, covering a distance of nearly 17 billion kilometers. It would take more than 10,000 hours to complete this distance. However, using the mindset from my physics class, the displacement of the earth is still 0. What a long and futile journey. 

Except for those delightful and cherishable moments, my whole life I’ve been struggling with mediocrity. Like every Asian family, my dad always toiled to earn a better life for his family and himself. With varying success, he has become a sweet son, a capable father, a lovable husband, and a better man. Everything has its double sides just due to the choice we made. His sacrifice of working has squeezed up his time with his family, but also made me conscious of my work ethic. If I can't work as hard and care as much as my father does for my family, will I live in despair, and will I prove worthy of my parents' sacrifice and love for me? And pitifully, even though I constantly think about improving myself, I give up without doing anything significant.

I've probably never been awake. Most people move forward in confusion, shedding tears, singing along the way, and breaking up but always getting back together. I walked past the door of strangers and stepped on the steps I didn't even know who was on the other side. Worthy of celebrating is the voguish depression and food disorder I have conquered. Every single day over the past few years, I’ve been fighting the beast in my body. Looking for the answer to life seemed the only way to save me from that abysmal dark hole I had made for myself. 

After failing to find an answer online, in books I read, or in people around me, I’ve chosen to throw my worst tantrums at my most lovable mom. In doing so, I’ve turned her from an angry-tiger mom who would thrash a box at me to a person who thought to fly to me from 10,000 miles to check on me. Ever since that moment, I’ve felt deeply regretful with no way to appease my feelings. I’ve tried doing yoga, meditating, and locking myself in a room to scream. But none of these methods made any impact except for inspiring protests from my neighbors. I felt my soul slowly depriving me, and my sensations of the outside get less and less sensitive, making it harder to involve myself in surrounding events. It seemed like I lost my ability to please myself and to notice something ravishing. Then, I started dreaming.

Looking through the kaleidoscope shaped like my life journey, the whole course of my life appeared to me as a fantasy. All of a sudden, things seemed to work out in my Covid fever dream. There, I transformed into a 7-year girl who pointed to the lonely floating cloud in the sky and asked if it was lonely by itself. I turned into a 12-year girl who begged her grandma to adopt a stray cat, and after getting rejected, sat on the ground to cry wildly. In my dream, I became me. 

When dreaming, I found traces of growth in my own definition but not in what the others expound. Living in this fast-paced world, I’ve always sought answers to every question that appears abruptly in my mind. Gradually, I realized that the answer to life is acknowledged through this moment, this minute, and this second we have been through. Treasuring every moment and prizing our emotional values are the answers to life. Pressures and anxieties should be a motivation but not a burden. Worrying too much about the future will only spawn insecurity and vulnerability. Growth is generated by enrichment, diversity, and personal progress and is customized by each individual.

I realized the world is not impeccable and never can be. But this is what it is destined to be and is an unchangeable truth. The massively complicated world reflects its shadow on every single person. Stepping out of that shadow, we will be aware of the beast from our hearts bolting for freedom. Things that happened in the past should not be barriers that prevent us from moving forward. They should be admonitions warning us to not let it happen again in the future and to improve. Even though beauty and joy will fade away anyways just like our lives diminish with aging, anticipations of beauty can last till the very end. 

When encountering something uncontrollable, just let it develop slowly as it should. We can complain, feel anxious, and even give up. However, we need to find a remedy after our castles crumpled. After that, we won't be easily contagious about what happened around us. The epiphany is not from any inspirational book or speech, but from me who is enjoying the resurgence.

Now, I have become a real adult, a person who is enjoying her growth and learning to embrace herself.