Scissor Happy.
But today, I left them in the drawer.
Transitions are hard. I’m not the first person to say it, and I won’t be the last. Though, they’ve never been hard for me. Since I was a child, I have always loved “change.” But, as I’ve gotten older, I turn 24 in 20 days, my prefrontal cortex is halting mass development, and if I’m honest, I can feel it.
It doesn’t feel like I’m done growing, changing or evolving. It doesn’t feel like I have learned all my lessons or I am as smart or wise as I will ever be. It feels more like I am settled. My emotions are less random. Things feel less all-encompassing, and decision-making comes easier. I care less if people like me, and I am quicker to have patience and peace than anger and anxiety.
I don’t owe all that to a more developed brain, though. At least, I don’t think.
Like I said before, thriving off change has been a blessing regarding life transitions. When I was a kid, I would walk around saying I loved change. I sought it out, from moving my bedroom around every 2 months to having a new best friend on the same timeline. I rode change into the darkness instead of letting it plummet through me. I thought I was built differently. Going to university, summer camp, weekend sleepovers, and moving out of my childhood home immediately after graduating high school with a stack of resumes in hand and the mindset that I wasn’t returning didn’t scare me. I never doubted myself. I never felt homesick.
I watched my peers, family members, students and campers (when I worked in leadership roles) struggle with homesickness like an incessant cold. Though I sympathized, I couldn’t empathize. I never felt it. Not really. Maybe as an infant, I did, but I don’t remember those days. It wasn’t that I didn’t miss people/places/things, but it didn’t consume me.
And everything about that seemed perfectly fine to me. Until about a month ago, at 23, I was sitting on the shower floor of a motel bathroom, letting the water gobble up tears from which I could not pinpoint the source. I realized the dread I felt was because I missed my boyfriend, apartment, and routine. I missed home.
I wasn’t some anomaly who never felt sad or scared when change came, but instead, I had learned not to feel sad or scared because change always came.
I crawled into the foreign bed, numbly flipped through the 10 channels available after a short and sweet goodnight face time, and realized I was capable of feeling homesick. That I wasn’t some anomaly who never felt sad or scared when change came, but instead, I had learned not to feel sad or scared because change always came.
When you grow up packing a bag every other weekend, saying goodbye to favourite toys, never fully settling into a routine because there are two. When you can’t get attached to Christmas gifts, recreational sports, or being a part of a team. When those childhood attachments are threads consistently snipped, all you can do to exercise any form of control is grab hold of the scissors.
Do you know when you find a new activity/skill/hobby, become attached to doing it, and reference it as “X happy”? For example, a coworker who found the poll feature in our group chat started sending polls for everything. We called him “poll happy.”
Well, I was scissor happy. No goodbye or loss ever hurt that bad because I held control. I was the one cutting things off before they could ever really get to me. I labelled the behaviour as a genuine love of change. The constant change and loss I experienced as a kid were threads woven by someone else. My parent’s marriage and divorce were part of the fabric of their lives; I was sown in and so had to endure the ripple. I had to feel it when that fabric was ripped apart. I often, in my childhood and teenagehood, and early 20s (I feel like 24 is mid-20s?), have found it extremely difficult to settle. I sought things out that I knew would leave me, or I would leave them because that was familiar.
In that motel room a month ago, I had the scissors in one hand and the thread in the other, but this time, I wove the thread myself. My routines, my home, and my relationships were things I forged and built. There was nothing to take me away from those things, no change forced onto me. Even with my scissors at the ready, that security and knowingness became a new and consistent friend. Permanence that I hadn’t realized I had invited into my life had convinced me to drop the scissors.
I missed home because it was mine. I put it together like a collage and added all my favourite bits. I made something beautiful, and I let myself feel safe there. I finally found something that didn’t have to change if I didn’t want it to. It wasn’t just about the place; I mean, I’m renting, this isn’t the be-all-end-all, but the stability from this home could actually be carried through to the next place.
I turn 24 in 20 days. I am done with school. I work full time. I have established a routine. This week is when I would have typically gone back to classes. Another opportunity to get scissor happy and thrive on change. But, everything is the same. I still have to get up at 7 and get home at 6. I still have my word count goal for my book and my usual work deadlines. I still live in the same place; I don’t have to pack up and move.
Everything is the same. Yet, everything is different. Transitions are not wholly easy, and for that, I am grateful. And today, I left the scissors in the drawer.
