The Valedictorian Speech That Never Was (22)

Sometimes I get these agonizing waves of nostalgia and grief for all the lives I didn’t live. And at 22, that’s a lot of life unlived-- that’s a lot of waves. 

Being 22 is such a terrifying age. It’s like how do you even do it? On the one hand, there’s the overwhelming weight of responsibility and of adulthood. There are the feelings of being a grown-up and of being wiser and better because of your age. On the other hand, there’s the fact that you still refer to adults as “grown-ups.” There’s the fact that you can have pizza and macaroni for dinner every night and not feel bad. There’s a pull. A constant pull between I don’t know anything, and I know absolutely everything. There’s a slight yearning for the future and for the past all at once. If someone offered to take care of you right now, you’d probably say yes. But let’s be honest, you’d be bored in .52 seconds. 

Being 22, it’s more than a fifth of most lifetimes. It’s old enough to say, I am still young and there’s so much more I need to do. But it’s also old enough to require resumes and vitas and detailed lists of our greatest accomplishments. It’s the balance between life lived and life yet to be lived, and it’s the only time I get to kind of stand still. But that’s the funny thing about time, it can be so different at every moment. But my goal is not to record time, my goal is to live in the moment, in the now. Because YOLO has reached the mainstream, and I’m supposed to be riding that wave of irresponsibility and having a good times because you only have one life, haven’t you heard. And I understand, I only get this moment once, and I understand life can be short, boy do I understand. But all the boring stuff they cut out for the movies, still has to happen. 

And maybe that’s what 22 is about. It’s about accepting that I have to get at least 8 hours of sleep most nights to function but staying up all night on Friday because the conversation is just too good to stop and the music is just so right. 

And maybe that’s not it at all because let’s be honest, I think I know nothing and everything at once so why ever would you trust me?