An honest letter

Recently I turned twenty-three and I can't believe how quickly time has passed - it has flown by in a blink of an eye. It seems that only yesterday I was sixteen and revising for my GCSE's at school. But with time passing I can't help be haunted by the thought that I'm wasting my seconds or that my life isn't as fulfilling as it should be. But it's important for me to remember that there is no 'should'. Social media infers that there is a certain way to live your life, with perfectly aesthetically placed food, or bright white beaches and somehow still having all the money in the world to achieve it. Every one is different and has different goals and achievements they wish to reach, but I still can't help but feel in competition with time as to how much I can physically do. Life on earth is short and just by sitting in my room after work watching TV I find myself asking whether I should be doing something extraordinary instead.

I feel we can get caught up in the busyness of life and we can sometime lose sight of what's important and what we want. It's impossible to fit every single thing we want to do into every day. And it's not easy to try and balance every aspect of your life into one perfect package either. If you want to reach something, then it takes a lot of willpower because often we can get swept up in every other small task or the tiredness that we feel.

At the same time of realising how fast time has gone, twenty-three is still young and many would say my life is only just beginning, but who's to say that life suddenly stops when you leave your twenties? It seems like such an odd phenomenon. Is it because beauty and athletic ability are the most sought after characteristics and when that is no longer something that comes naturally, we're put at the bottom of the pile? It seems strange because after all what others think of us shouldn't make a difference because they're not going to stop their lives just to impose on us. It may only have a negative effect on the person at the receiving end. Believe it or not, we are still living and breathing human beings no matter what the age and with that comes endless possibilities.

Being young is also a lot more challenging than I imagined as a child, and it's not a woe is me moment, because life can be hard no matter the age, mental health or ability. But I feel with being young, you learn a lot of things the hard way and that is why people say the older the wiser you become and perhaps it's true. At the same time every day is a school day - just when you're young it may be the first time you're experiencing something. There's still a lot of pressure to get it right the first time around because if you don't then are you wasting your time making the wrong decisions? But, through every decision ever made you've still seen the light of day afterwards and handled the outcome. It may have been hard, but you can't change it so you might as well grow with it.

Trying to make others happy and keeping yourself happy seems like a constant battle throughout life and something I have never struggled with until recently. Although it doesn't matter what people think, I don't feel that this is the main factor that's causing the struggle between self and person. I think as humans we all want to be attached and not be lonely and by spending a lot of my time in my own company recently, it's made me realise how we try to hang onto anything that will protect us. I often ask myself, is it so bad that by doing and saying what we want, that it will hurt others? I'm not sure that living a life for other people is the reason we were put on the planet. I'm sure we are here to help others, but in how much can we sacrifice ourselves for that? At any time, is it appropriate to be a people pleaser at the sacrifice of yourself, no matter how hard it gets? It's important to remember you're no longer a child having to waiver to every body else shapes and sizes. You're an adult and you can make choices that are right for you and how someone else receives it cannot always be controlled. But we can control what we do. We cannot have everything at once. We cannot have and hide at the same time, so sometimes doing the thing that is right for us, may also be letting parts of us down that we don't want to. But either you keep sacrificing yourself for others, or you simply do what's right and control the damage afterwards.

...so many questions at the age of twenty-three!