I’ve Shed my teenage skin and This is the most confused I’ve ever been in my life

I turned 20 years old yesterday. It’s crazy to reach the age that I told my younger self I would’ve done anything to avoid — including suicide. Starting around the age of 12 — when life started to become historical and my actions started to matter — I consistently told myself that if life didn’t get better before I turned 16, I’d end it. However my 16 birthday came around too fast, so I pushed the deadline back to my 18th birthday. Then I turned 18, and told myself I’d do it at 20.

Well, now I’m 20 years old and death seems like a selfish option that I’d be unable to commit too — not because I’m in love with life, but because I know I have people that love me. I genuinely believe I’m one of the luckiest people in the world that was set up with the best foundation of love anyone could wish for, and with that gift I feel the need to be good at this life stuff. Nevertheless, I’m still a human being that has underlying problems which affect me on a day to day basis. They get in my way of success, and these problems are things that I never would’ve been able to prepare for.

My Prediction vs. my reality

I keep on trying to look back on what my younger self thought I would be like at 20. I don’t think I’m anything like what I expected. The projected image I had of myself was of a woman who had her life together and is, without a doubt, on a solidified path to success. I imagined myself to be have the same exact people in my life as I did when I was 14. I thought that I was going to be strictly academically driven. I was sure that I was always going to be emotionally mature and have established morals that shake off any confusion.

However, that projected person did not become my reality. I’ve never felt more complicated, confused, and lost in my entire life. The hardest reality I’ve been forced to face is that I’m wrong about a lot of things and I need to put my ego aside to help myself learn what works best for me in this time. As a kid, life was pretty straightforward. I had to know how to read, learn how to solve simple math, play with my friends, be with my family, eat whatever I wanted, and simply just enjoy my time however I wished to. Because of the simplicity, I feel like I knew everything I ever needed to know about life and differentiating right from wrong had never been so easy.

However, That is not how life looks anymore. I hate it.

The more I experience, the dumber I feel. Growing up, I was consistently told that I was smart and mature for my age. My parents were praised by the people who knew me for raising such a great kid. However, I can’t help to feel that I’ve lost that wisdom and intelligence. My transition into adulthood has thrown me challenges I’ve never had to learn how to deal with. How does one go about confiding in themselves and others after having been betrayed by one, two, three, four, or even more people in their life in the span of a year? Will I ever be able to correctly coordinate my time between school, work, friends, family, and myself? Am I taking my current life seriously enough to achieve the future I want? Obviously I could keep on going for forever with more questions, just like any other living being, but those are some of the generally more important ones that are circling my head right now. Since I grew up pretty conserved to myself and my family, I wasn’t able to develop the right tools to deal with all of this confusion.

Another important realization I’ve recently had is that I’m an extremely stubborn person who is actually wrong about 20% of the time — if the reality is that it’s more than that, then it’s something I still haven’t come to terms with— and it’s a hurtful trait to have.