Fear of the Future

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

For as long as I can remember, parents, teachers, grandparents, and even other children, have been asking me this question.

As a child, I eagerly answered with, “I’m going to be a doctor!”. This simple and seemingly innocent enquiry has since turned into the dreaded trio. They haunt me in my sleep, catch me when I least expect them, and follow me no matter where I hide.

What do you want to do?

Who do you want to be?

Where do you want to go?

I’m 24. At five years old, I thought 24 was “grown up”. Twenty four was an unfathomable age in my distant, and dream-like, future.

At five, I imagined myself at 24. I would be living in a mansion that resembled my 90’s Barbie dream home, driving a jade-green corvette with the top down and my hair wild, wearing a white coat with my name on the pocket and a stethoscope draped over my neck, stopping casually at a drive-thru for a coffee because that’s what adults did, and spending my weekends shopping with all the money I would make from my luxurious career as a physician. 

I have recently found out that I was an optimistic five year old with expensive taste. Life is a whole lot tougher when you don’t have your mommy and daddy driving you places, paying for things, and feeding you three meals a day.

I was more certain of my future at age five than I am now, nearly two decades later.

Those questions, what do you want to do, who do you want to be, where do you want to go, scare me so much because honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know the answers. I don’t even feel half way to “grown up”.

Sure, I have some bills to pay, I live in a new country, I have a job, and I can choose to eat ice-cream for dinner if I so desire, but I’m not grown up.

Lately, my life feels like a roller coaster ride that just keeps twisting and turning. Every time I think to myself, “Hey, it may be time to get off,” another loop or steep incline catches me by surprise, mouth open, heart pounding.

I have this gut feeling that the ride is going to end soon. My cart is going to come to a halt, my eyes are going to open, and I am going to arrive at some magical final destination called “grown-up”. But when will it stop? and honestly, do I want it to?

Not knowing scares me, but at the same time I am spellbound by the idea that maybe this ride never does end.

Somedays I feel like I’m the only one with this fear of uncertainty, fear of the unknown, fear of my future.

Finding peace in the uncertainty is something I struggle with everyday. Somedays not knowing feels liberating, I feel free in the purest way possible. Other days, the fear is paralyzing in the most extreme way imaginable.

I guess it’s not really the not knowing part that scares me. It’s more the fear of change. Fear that what’s to come won’t be as good as what has passed.

I catch myself wallowing in my past. I fall asleep with the hopes that I will wake up seated behind my desk in my first grade class in a pleated romper, learning how to hold a #2 pencil properly, from Mrs. Rep.

Most days I don’t want to go that far back. I just want to rewind enough to experience some of my firsts again. My adolescence. The adventures, the laughter, the growing-up, even the cattiness, the unnecessary drama, and the heartbreak that made middle school, high school, and college so imperfectly perfect.

So how do I fix it? How do I accept change? How do I stop this fear?

I know there are two ways to treat the fear. I either let it paralyze me and hold me back, or I use it to drive myself forward, to push myself harder in some direction, whatever that may be.

I don’t exactly know what I want to do, who I want to be, or where I want to go, but I know I don’t want to stay still. I don’t want to drive in circles or drive in reverse, I want to go forward.

If the track ends or if I slide off for a bit, that’s okay too. I just have to keep moving towards something, keep pushing myself, keep asking questions, and keep trying new things. I am confident that with a little hard work and the optimism my five-year old self would want me to have, I will end up where I need to be, when I need to be there.