I wish I could go back to college…
Comments (4) …life was so simple back then.
Musical quotes aside, as I’ve been working on my show I’ve been thinking a lot about transitioning, the parts of my life where I feel like I’ve missed something important as a result of waiting to transition, and how to recapture whatever those “missed” things are.
Along those lines, I had a conversation with a friend about dating someone who is transitioning. She said, very diplomatically, that it must be hard dating someone who is constantly trying to discover themselves, reinvent themselves, experiment with their identity and with their presentation. I laughed, and said, “It’s OK. You can say it: It must be hard dating a teenager whose in their mid-twenties.”
Because, to some extent, that’s what transitioning is. Our teen years (and, to some extent, our college years – hence the title of this post) are supposed to be a time of self-discovery, where it’s OK to dress outlandishly, experiment with your interests and social groups, declare radical new identities only to shed them days or weeks or months later…
In this conversation, my friend said, “But now you get a second chance to do all that!”
“First chance,” I replied. “My teenage years weren’t about finding an identity, they were about avoiding one.”
How do I find my identity this time around?
Themocracy