The moment I turned 18, my first thought was “I literally
have permission to do WHATEVER I WANT,” and I proceeded to back out of my
parents’ driveway with the directions to Body Art Emporium memorized. No sooner
had I reached the end of the street, I got a call from my mom screeching
through the phone, “if you come back with a piercing or a tattoo, don’t come
back at all!”
A nose piercing and three tattoos later, my mom hasn’t
disowned me yet.
It has taken me years to realize that permission isn’t just
about the legalities that come with poking holes in your body or branding
yourself with inked needles. Permission is something we frequently look to
others to give, but rarely think about the permissions we give ourselves in
more abstract and obscure ways.
On the cusp of my 27th birthday, I’ve come to
realize that every year of my 20s represents a stake in the ground toward
self-acceptance and giving myself the permission I never knew that I gave, but
desperately needed at the time.
Permission
to Dream
I am 19 going on 20.
I’m heading to Chicago in the fall
because I have this crazy idea that one day I’m going to be a comedy writer.
Last year, I started my blog, My Life Is Ridiculous, and I really couldn’t have
imagined the response that it got. I have people on campus I don’t even know
telling me that they loved my latest post. I mean, it’s not like I’m a celebrity
or anything, given that I don’t think 1,100 fans from a tiny liberal arts
school in Indiana really boosts my notoriety in the grand scheme of things. But
I’m hoping Chicago will help me get there.
I fell in love with the city the first time I visited—a weekend
trip with my improv group that included shows, workshops, and no shortage of
underage drinking in a hotel room crammed with seven wide-eyed college
students, our entire lives ahead of us.
That trip was the first time I stepped foot in the iO
Theater. There was a thick energy that hung in the air, and the floors and
walls were vibrating with the magic I felt in that building. It was as if I had
been speaking a different language my entire life and crossing the threshold
into that sanctuary was the translation I had been looking for.
I promised myself after that trip that I would find my way
back there. Somehow, someway. All roads would lead me back. Writing and
performing wasn’t just something that I “did.” It was me. It is me. And now
I’m finally on my way back to spend a semester exploring this crazy dream of
mine.
Coming from a family of lawyers and entrepreneurs, it seems
a bit frivolous. Probably impulsive and brash. Most definitely not lucrative.
But it’s something that feels like it’s in my DNA.
I am 19 going on 20 and the possibilities are endless. All I
have to do is just say yes.
Permission
to Pursue
I am 20 going on 21.
I’m about to start my senior year, and
I’ve found my direction. I don’t want to be a lawyer or an entrepreneur or a
sales associate at some shitty advertising firm in the Midwest. I want to be a
writer. I want to be a performer. And I’m kind of mad at myself for just now
opening this up for discussion or consideration. There’s a difference between
dreaming and doing and I’m ready to come back down to earth. I’m ready to stop
thinking that my dream is something off in the distance that I keep chasing and
I am ready to tether myself to these aspirations and put down roots with them.
I proved to myself last year in Chicago that I am dedicated
to this. And the people who succeed are the ones who never give up and never
resort to Plan B. I don’t want a Plan B.
I am going to graduate school. And I am not going for
anything universal or generally understood or even at all transferrable,
because that would be an easy out. Fuck you, MBA. Fuck you, MFA. I am going for
what I want, unapologetically. I am applying for a Master’s of Science in
Television program at Boston University where I can study sitcom writing and
video production and sketch writing and everything I have ever hedged my bets
on. And if I don’t get accepted, then that’s my sign.
I know this isn’t going to be the easiest path. I’ve heard
enough “starving artist” stories to tide me over for a lifetime. But I don’t
want to wake up in Southern white suburbia as a 34-year old stay at home mom
who once had a dream, but now consoles herself with Zumba and Xanax and can’t
bear to watch her favorite sitcoms without sobbing into her glass of red wine.
I am 20 going on 21 and I’m not going to let fear stand in
my way.
Permission
to Be Independent
I am 21 going on 22.
I’m packing up my life and heading to
Boston to start graduate school. I’m moving almost 1,000 miles away from home.
To a city I’ve only visited once. To a school where I know no one. To an
overpriced studio apartment that I have all to myself. And I am electric right
now.
This feels like the beginning of my life. This is my fresh
start where I get to grow into whatever I’m in the process of becoming without
judgment and without hesitation. This is where I get to find myself and let go
of everything I allowed people to mold me into up until this point.
One of my faults is that I have always cared too much about
what other people think or what other people say, and it has taken me this long
to realize that those are the people who will forever be imprisoned by their
own insecurities.
I am 21 going on 22 and this is just day one of who I’m
going to be.
Permission
to Be Loved
I am 22 going on 23.
I think I may have met the guy I want
to spend the rest of my life with. It sounds completely juvenile and reckless
to say, considering we have only been dating for a little over a month now, but
I feel like going through so much of what you don’t want in a relationship
makes it so much easier to identify what you do want.
I think high school and most college relationships are
destined to fail and are really stupid (and I just lost half of my readers
there). The only thing that keeps them from crumbling for the most part is
history and comfortability and the fear of having to start all over again.
Brains are really fucked up in the way they remember things and analyze things
when it comes to love.
I was in a terrible relationship. Like,
any-one-of-the-Kardashian-women-and-their-significant-others-at-any-point-in-time
terrible. We were toxic for one another, but we kept holding on because it was
the only thing we knew. Why ruin a terrible thing when you could risk finding
an equally terrible thing? I mean, staying in the current terrible thing, at
least you know his brand of terrible. And clearly, that’s better than having to
learn a new type of terrible, right?
I was really wounded and confused when I met Pat. I was
jaded and ready to fend off another suitor who would most likely take a number
and get in line with the other assholes I had dated.
I have never had someone text me “good morning beautiful” on
almost a daily basis. I have never had someone call or text me first, regardless
of who called or texted last. I have never had someone trust me during a night
out with my girlfriends, not even thinking about texting me “WHO ARE YOU WITH”
or “WHERE ARE YOU.” Where I am used to abrasiveness, he is calming. Where I am used
to fear, he is reassuring. Where I am used to doubt, he is forthcoming. Walking
on eggshells has turned into resting on cloud nine. And the idea of love that I
had before is completely eviscerated.
I am so scared that this won’t work out. Or that I’ll fall
back into unhealthy habits and ruin everything. But for now, it just really
feels like what I need and something I can hold on to.
I am 22 going on 23 and I am allowing myself to fall in
love, real love, for the first time.
Permission
to Say No
I am 23 going on 24.
A few months ago, I quit my first job
out of graduate school. Four months into a three-year contract. My first
career, over. Going into it, I felt so extremely accomplished. I had just
finished a degree that cost me almost $100,000, and started my shiny new
grown-up life making 40k as a writer and producer at a TV news station in Louisville,
where the misery and bitterness and inflated egos of mediocre anchors palpably
hung in the hallways. This is what being an adult was, surely.
This was my new life—being duped into working a shift I
never agreed to that was never mentioned in my interview or in my contract,
dodging sexist and inappropriate comments from my boss who never passed up an
opportunity to remind me that I was hired because his boys club needed a female
headcount, enduring verbal beatings and personal belittling almost nightly from
an old, washed up, narcissistic anchor who was the face of the station and then
being told by the newsroom director “that’s just how it is around here, so you may
as well get used to it.”
I sobbed into my microwave meal every night while I sat
alone in my office until 11pm. And each night, being lied to and taken
advantage of felt more wrong than the night before. Tolerating blatant sexism
and harassment for fear of speaking up felt more wrong than the night before.
Accepting verbal abuse felt more wrong than the night before. And “so you may
as well get used to it” felt like the nail in the coffin.
I filed paperwork for my resignation three months in to my
employment, and after wading through a legal shitstorm, I was finally out of
there after four months.
Even my family judged me. Telling me that no employer wants
to hire someone who quits after four months. Telling me that I had ruined my
career. Telling me that I’ll hate all jobs I have, and that I should just “deal
with it.” My parents were disappointed in me. My sisters talked in whispers
behind my back, assuming I just must be one of those people who can’t hold a
job.
To be honest, I really didn’t care. Quitting this job was
like coming up for air after being tied to a cinder block and thrown into a
lake by a bunch of delusional fucks who think working in a DMA that barely made
it into the top 50 in the country makes them Oprah Fucking Winfrey.
I am 23 going on 24 and I am so over “getting used to it.”
Permission
to Grow
I am 24 going on 25.
I have rebounded from my “first career”
that everyone told me I would never come back from. I am working in corporate
America for the first time, and I have to admit, it is pretty dope. I’m not
technically in a field that I went to school for. So much for “fuck plan B,”
amiright?
Even though I’m not writing as much and only performing at a local
bar for small crowds, I feel like I am here for a reason. I’m learning new
skills and working for a FORTUNE 500 company, which is a goal I never set out
to achieve, but I am so thankful for the opportunity. Going into my interview
here, being completely transparent, I was definitely in a fake-it-til-you-make-it
mode. Maybe I don’t have the amount of technical experience as other
candidates, but I sure as hell have the aptitude and the appetite to excel at
anything to make it look like I’m an expert.
Even though I find myself doing completely different work
than I had intended, I am growing in ways that I know I need to but have been
too proud to admit. I’m gaining technical skills that I never knew I would be
so interested in. Social listening? I had never heard of it before this role
and surprisingly, I have become passionate about the storytelling behind
analytics.
I’m still in Louisville, which I never intended, but at
least I’m making the most out of it while I’m here. I know that this experience
is setting me up for something bigger. It has to be. I can only grow so much in
this role and at this company before I’m reaching for more.
I am 24 going on 25 and I’m learning that even if I’m not
doing what I love, there’s always a greater purpose to it.
Permission
to Jump
I am 25 going on 26.
I think about killing myself sometimes.
Woah, I know. Not a great line out of the gate. But honestly, the only way I’m
going to realize it’s an issue that needs to be addressed is if I actualize it.
If I say it out loud. Just like everyone who has ever heard of Alcoholics
Anonymous, “acceptance is the first step of acknowledging the problem.” So,
yeah. I guess I can accept that some days I feel like I am worthless and I feel
that I am living a life of monotony and complacency that just cycles over and
over again like that terrible Christmas movie where Brink! repeats Christmas
day until he appreciates what he has.
I just got married to someone who has proven himself not
only to be the love of my life, but also capable of dealing with the unpredictability
and emotional chaos that comes with loving someone who has depression. It breaks
my heart when he asks me what’s wrong and there are no words to describe the
tightness in my chest and the tears welling up in my eyes.
I’ve put off medication for as long as I can, because I want
to convince myself that I am stronger than the circumstances around me. But I’m
not. I have to take care of myself. I have to figure myself out.
On the outside, I have the perfect life. But on the inside,
I feel like I have given up. I used to have dreams that I would fight for. I
felt invincible knowing that my spirit was undeterred. Letting go is the only
way to fight off the stagnancy.
I am 25 going on 26 and if I don’t go for it now, I never
will.
Permission
to Fly
I am 26 going on 27.
I am living in Chicago, the first city
to truly draw me in and tie a string to my heart. My job is to write for the
largest food company in the United States. Every Wednesday, I walk the halls of
the iO Theater as a student, halfway through the training program and dedicated
to perfecting the art that I promised myself I would pursue.
Every door that I have knocked on this year has opened for
me without hesitation. I have learned that I would rather regret taking a risk
than face the consequences of inaction. I have learned that if I don’t believe
in myself by now, I can’t convince anyone else to do it for me.
For every year in my 20s, I’ve added a notch on my belt of
self-acceptance, and I don’t expect to stop giving myself permission where I
have lacked confidence or direction.
I am 26 going on 27 and I have learned that every time you
jump, you make the choice to let fear weigh you down or you let your hopes
carry you.
