The Person I Never Became

Written by Tara Bozickovic

Can you remember them?

The person you once imagined you would be, or hoped you would have become by this point. I still remember mine. When I was on the cusp of eighteen, she seemed only inches away. The unfortunate truth is she never allowed me to get any closer than that.

In the time leading up to my first year of university, I was increasingly desperate for the fulfillment of every seductive idea that is promised to you in adulthood. Independence, wisdom, confidence, poise – most vitally, unquestionable belonging. Moving across continents made me feel as though I was worming my way closer and closer to this person and the life I imagined she would live. This was meant to be a wonderfully hectic four years of soirees, intellectual discovery, and friendly faces – all wrapped up in a bow of one giant, romantic hangover. Not only had I imagined all of this, but I actually had enough audacity to think it was guaranteed. I thought she would be there waiting for me, tapping her foot and checking her watch.

She and her life were nowhere to be found. Instead, I lived off-campus, in a city that had all sorts of new noises, people, and wind chills I had never experienced. In the rare moments the pandemic and the cold allowed me to leave my apartment, I attended lectures which gave way to a lifelong, albeit deeply naive, fear – my purported excellence was merely average in the grand scheme of intellect. English Literature had flipped the script and suddenly I was the one being picked apart, analyzed, and conquered. I didn’t know who the hell Chaucer was and quite frankly it felt like a humiliation ritual to start with him.

My failures multiplied, as I soon became a worse girlfriend than I was an interpreter of Chaucer. Up until that point, I had defined romance as my first long-term relationship with someone I couldn’t picture not adoring. The physical separation of an ocean quickly felt small compared to the mental and emotional distance it festered. The more desperately we tried to connect, the further we grew apart.

The ocean also separated me from where I’d derived my definition of friendship – the incredible girls I had spent my childhood living on top of and underneath. To me, it had meant unfaltering dedication and unspoken loyalty. It tasted like a jar of Tesco mascarpone, smelled like a room that’d been napped in, felt like a sister I had always wanted. The ease of those relationships, and the foundation of unconditional richness they were built from, had warped my perception of myself and society in general. It actually wasn’t easy to be wanted as a companion, many people were not friendly, and the rare ones who were at first didn’t come with a warning of just how unfriendly they’d turn out to be.

I spent most of that first year alone in my apartment, a two-bedroom which was only half full. I had plenty of time to think, and to come to terms with the most devastating part of adulthood – the only thing truly promised to you when you reach it is loss. A very subtle kind of grief finds you regularly in ways you would never have expected. A contagious laugh which doesn’t get to infect you as often, losing confidence in a talent you once believed you were born for, aching for the person you believed you were destined to become, the life you thought they would have.

Eighteen made me bend, twist, and backflip in all sorts of different directions. I was constantly chasing who I believed I should be, unwaveringly persistent in trying to reach the person I had spent my entire life curating and dreaming up. I pulled ideas from every external source surrounding me, trying on many strange versions which each fit awkwardly in their own way. It became exhausting, of course, because I never stopped running – I was in pursuit of a fleeting and ever-morphing person, to whom life always granted a head start. This exhaustion and frustration were amplified by how desperately I craved to be an adult, while not yet having the tools to properly gauge the emotional heaviness of being one.

In hindsight, my biggest misstep was trapping myself in a sort of purgatory. I wasn’t relishing the freedom of adulthood, the release of everything adolescence had made me sick of. Really, I did quite the opposite – I placed myself in the middle of a twisted game of tug-of-war, stuck between everything I had loved in childhood, and everything I hated about getting older. I had wanted things to be different without accepting the fact that they would be different. I only wanted to gain, but I was nowhere near ready to lose.

I wish I could say that I managed to break free of this out of my own volition, but letting go is something I have never, and may not ever, be good at. I got broken up with in my second year, my relationship finally succumbing to the vast pressure an ocean put on it. It was a loss so immense, a break from the tug-of-war so violent, it felt like a cruel punishment for having held on so tightly in the first place.

We tend to view these kinds of losses as a sanction, simply because it hurts so much. However, as the story often goes, one which is wonderfully true, it can turn out to be quite the opposite. The only way to survive at that point was to stop looking behind me, because all I could see back there were painful reminders. I finally took the chance to look in front of and around me, at what had persisted, and also at what was possible. It felt as though my world had collapsed, but what remained intact amongst the rubble kept me standing. Hidden within these precious remains was everything that had been waiting to reach me once I was willing to welcome it. 

Already deeply uncomfortable, the discomfort of newness suddenly felt like salvation. I allowed myself to be present. I explored the unknown, accepted it, and was simultaneously soothed by what had prevailed. I allowed myself to be embraced by people and experiences I wasn’t familiar with, finally understanding that they weren’t wrong for being different than what I was used to, or had expected. It was utterly terrifying, this feeling of“ I’m so far from what I thought was home.” For the first time, however, I let myself be curious about that terror, rather than afraid. I didn’t allow myself to cut and run, like I had so many times before – I made the active choice to stay, to revel in it.

Being eighteen will break your heart, certainly. I wish I could have known that it was exactly what needed to happen. It created an opportunity for it to be patched back together again – stronger, older, and wiser this time, without all the excess. The things worth keeping from childhood – the friends, the ideas, the habits – remained intact, even flourished, while everything that was wrong for me started to fall away, bit by bit. I gained what I never would have thought to ask for, and what I didn’t know I needed. In adulthood there is definitely loss, a kind of breaking, but only by experiencing it do we have the opportunity to come into ourselves. You can’t rebuild something that hasn’t first been broken.

My initial definition of friendship hasn’t been eradicated, but it has expanded and re-written itself. Today, it now also means persistence. It means the amount of love you have for one another remains unchanged, showing up even amongst the hurdles of distance, budget, and timing which will inevitably separate you. Friendship also now takes a larger variety of shapes. Extending an invite, taking the time to catch each other up on the childhoods you didn’t share, or even simply a friendly face to grab a coffee with. What I’m looking forward to is for this definition – in fact, any and all of my current definitions – to continue to grow along with me.

The person I always hoped to become at eighteen is someone I maybe could have been. I remember her, and I’ll forever hold her dear to me. After all, she’s a keepsake of every childhood dream I once had. She has also reinvented herself, I’d say she’s around twenty-five now. But I’m no longer chasing her desperately. She is instead a manifestation of every sliver of hope, inspiration, and imagination which motivates me to keep moving forward, to continue reaching for something. I’ve decided to make peace with her.

The person I’ve turned into instead is made up of every single experience that has shaped me so far. All of the joy, nausea, laughter, tears, failure. Most vitally, of every single time I made the bold choice to pick myself back up and try again.

Dare I say – she’s pretty great, too.