I Wish I Could Tell My 19-Year-Old Self…
In a nutshell, don’t worry about the boys, chase your own dreams, and cut up the credit cards
There’s a saying that hindsight is 20/20 and that youth is wasted on the young. However, what happens when you waste your youth? I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I would tell a younger version of myself.
The one that had her priorities slightly off-kilter. The one who made a few reckless decisions that took years to overcome. It boils down to three main points that I wish she would have realized.
Don’t Worry About the Boys
When I was 19, I was attending a Christian College. I would transfer out the next year, but the effects of those younger days would stay with me. Many times, as is the case in the college I attended, there is a focus on relationships in college. A common joke was that bible college was synonymous with bridal college. During their freshman years, a lot of my friends at the time met their future husbands.
I was single the entire first year. All I wanted was what my friends had. I wanted the relationship. It was a deep well of comparison and envy which made me miserable and isolated me from my friends.
I had a hard time being content in the circumstances and I allowed it to get to my head to the point where I became miserable, to everyone else, and to myself. I didn’t necessarily lose friends, but I lost a lot of opportunities to spend time with them due to my moodiness.
It would be 13 years almost to the day when I met my husband-to-be. It took a lot of wrong turns and relationships where there was a lot of pain. Relationships I could have avoided if I had thought differently and accepted my singleness as the gift it was. It was a gift to have that complete freedom to explore and to attempt different things.
Takeaway: if love is meant to find you, it will. It might not be when you want it to be. There might be some hard days when you look around you and think “why me”? as it seems that everyone around you is pairing off. Enjoy that time instead of by exploring what really interests you and what you really stand for.
Chase Your Own Dreams
Society has a way of working into our minds what an acceptable career path is or isn’t. To be honest, at 19 I had no idea what I wanted to do. I thought I knew it but deep in my heart, I had no clue. I tried ministry, literature, and teaching and psychology before I realized that what was acceptable in other’s eyes would be the teaching gig.
I wasted a lot of time and money in college to get a degree that I don’t use. If I could go back, I would have worked until I knew what I wanted to do. As it turns out, I wanted to be a writer. I could have achieved that goal a number of ways and accruing thousands of dollars in debt was not one of them.
Take away: give yourself time and chase your passions. What really lights you up? Don’t make decisions on studies until you’re 100% sure you know what you want. If that means taking a gap year, take it.
Cut Up the Credit Cards
Credit cards have a way of presenting themselves as the golden ticket. They don’t require immediate payment and a future version of you can pay for what you can’t pay for today. We go thousands into debt trying to impress others and trying to buy things we want that we can’t afford.
My debt cycle started when I was 19. It would progress through my 20s and early 30s. Today I’m finally working on paying it off and I’m committed to the progress. However, starting with 8500 on top of student loans and car payment is something I regret. Every year that I’m paying it off is a year I forego savings.
The takeaway: be careful with money. Don’t sign up for a credit card until you know 100% that you can control it and pay it off. If possible, avoid having one altogether. Even if you’re making more money in the future, the decisions you make today might make it harder for the future version of you to deal with the debt of car, school, and credit.
There are a lot of life lessons that a younger version of ourselves could benefit from. However, these are the top three for me. Looking back, it hasn’t been a bad life thus far, but I would have benefitted from these three lessons and they are the wisdom I’d pass on to anyone I know in their teenage years.
