20Something: Sarah

“I’m not going to let anyone tell me who I am before I know who I am myself.” 

We’re seated around a table in a dimly-lit West Loop restaurant, the remnants of rich pasta dishes strewn about in front of us. Our waiter has asked us repeatedly if we need anything else (a dessert menu? A refill? The check, perhaps?), and each time, we’ve smiled and shaken our heads, eager to return to the task at hand: a compliment circle. The concept is new to me, and daunting (I have yet to learn how to receive compliments in any way other than a shaky laugh), but I think it sounds like a nice idea. Sarah is leading this exercise. Her hands wave excitedly as she explains how it works, nearly upending her drink in the process. 

I am in the hot seat first. I sit back in my chair and take a moment to decide which part of the wall I want to make eye contact with. “Okay, I’ll start!” Sarah chirps, her shimmering gold dress catching a stray piece of candlelight as she tucks her hair behind her ears and sits up straighter to face me. She takes one deep breath, and launches into a minutes-long string of compliments that go far deeper than surface level. I sit there, wide-eyed, wondering how someone I’ve known for little more than a month has managed to pick up on more of my character traits than I even knew were recognizable to the outside world. But that’s Sarah for you.

Sarah and I went to college together but we weren’t introduced until recently, when she moved to Chicago. I decided I liked her instantly; she exudes a kind of carefree effervescence that makes it hard not to. Five minutes in her presence reveals the obvious: she’s the breed of extrovert who is determined to get to know anyone she crosses paths with. She’s loquacious, and seems to have a million thoughts in her head that rattle out of her at a mile a minute asiftheyareonhertongueandoutintheairbeforeherbrainevenrealizesbutsomehoweverythingmakesperfectsensetherearejustsomanythoughtstogetoutandsolittletimeandohmygodbabeIforgottoaskaboutyouhowareyoudoinghowisworkhowistheboyyou’retalkingtoonlystoppingwhensheneedstocomeupfor 

air! 

And then, onward. 

But beyond her effulgent surface layer lies a woman so sure of herself, so optimistic, so at ease in the face of change, that at times I’ve wondered if she simply regurgitates words from pop culture manifestation lingo to convince herself of her own confidence, because how can someone our age already feel so steadfast in who they are? Our interview proved me wrong.

She comes over to my apartment on a sunny Saturday morning, rushing breathlessly through my doorway and hugging me tightly as the chatter begins to spill out of her. We converse aimlessly about our standard array of topics (her new job, my new job, boys, things we want to manifest, boys, our recent night out that ended in a 2am trip to Canes) as I’m setting up. She’s the kind of person I feel instantly comfortable discussing my life with. When I finally hit record, the first thing I ask her to do is tell me about her early life. I know she’s from Utah, and that she spent a couple of years in Steamboat, but I don’t know much beyond that.

In her signature style, she starts to breeze through her life story. “So I was born in DeKalb, Illinois,” she begins, going on to explain that she actually spent the majority of her life in Utah, where she was raised Mormon. At the age of 12, she decided to leave the church. She’d been questioning the teachings for a while, but her discomfort with a new rule that banned children of gay couples from getting baptized was the ultimate catalyst. She says she’s always had a strong moral compass. “Yeah, it was interesting,” she says.  

At the age of 15, her parents got divorced. It was sudden, she tells me, but it shaped her ability to adapt to change. Going through it at an age where conformity and stability are often the roots of all our desires taught her to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. “It was super interesting,” she says.

At the age of 18, she moved to a small beach town in Italy for a summer and met a boy. She speaks of her summer fondly, and of the boy a little less so. He was older and foreign (I, for one, cannot blame her), and while she’s managed to find silver linings from their time together (he pushed her to travel, taught her the importance of adventure), she admits that the relationship was unhealthy. “It was kind of interesting,” she says.

“Interesting,” Sara’s Version, seems to be a euphemism - her way of delicately describing an experience as less-than-ideal. I don’t get the sense that she’s trying to cover anything up, but rather that she’s truly taken the time to process her past, work through whatever healing she needed, and is ready to move on. Interesting.

She doesn’t mention much to me about her college years beyond describing the aforementioned relationship (toxic) and the one that followed soon after (healthier, taught her what real love felt like, but was still wrong for her in the end). What she does expand upon is the aftermath: “I got really into the outdoors,” she tells me. “I got crazy into, like, going to the desert every week and going camping and learning how to mountain bike, fly fish, ski, all of those things. My thing is, like, whenever I’m getting into something, I fully commit. Whatever my bit is, or whatever my reality is in the moment, I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re fully going for it.’” 

As a Bit Girl myself, I totally relate to her process here. Her outdoorsy girl bit, compounded by years of a fast-paced college life, led her to a job in Steamboat, where she decided it was time to slow down. As she describes small town living, I can’t help but think back to my own first year postgrad, when it felt like all I could do was slam on the gas. I wonder if I would have benefitted from some time spent alone, reflecting on years both past and to come. The answer is probably yes.

Here’s something I cannot relate to: she tells me that making herself uncomfortable is a good outlet for her. I give her a “Do you know who you’re talking to?” look. Her affinity for leaving her comfort zone made her realize that Steamboat, quiet and quaint as it was, wasn’t quite the right place for her. “I love that feeling of having your back against the wall. That’s when I always feel like I do the best,” she says. So she moved to Chicago with one friend and no plan. The city has been good to her so far, at least it seems that way as a bystander. A job and an apartment have lined up, and her circle of friends has expanded considerably. “I kind of feel like I quantum jumped,” she laughs. 

* * * *

As she speaks, hands flying and big gulps of air being taken between each thought, I marvel at how someone can handle this much change so gracefully. And, since I have yet to sack up and try out therapy, I ask her for her coping strategies. “Is there a process you go through in your head to adjust to change?” I ask (hopefully).

“This sounds kind of silly,” she says, “but I literally feel like I compartmentalize stress, do you know what I mean? I really just focus on the actionable steps I can take. So I guess it’s different with everything, but just being focused on what you have control over is so huge.” She goes on to explain that watching the adults in her life behave, *ahem,* interestingly taught her early on that you can’t control anyone else’s actions. You can’t control the outcome of anything, in fact, beyond your own reaction. 

She uses the analogy of a bookshelf. “I imagine a bookshelf, and I’m going through it, like, ‘Okay, this is the stress I’m gonna deal with today.” She starts to mime plucking books off of a shelf: the first one is finding an apartment. She stresses about it, deals with it, and puts it back. Next up is a third round interview for her dream job, and the steps are the same: feel the stress, deal with the stress, put the book back. “I’m not going to pull out the Find an Apartment and Dream Job books at the same time,” she says, as if it’s common sense. Well, when you put it like that…

Therapy can wait another day! 

“What do you like about change?” I ask. “I feel like you always find silver linings in everything.”

The question gives her pause. She looks up at the ceiling for a moment as she thinks, but the words never really stop coming: “I thinkkk my favorite thingggg issssss..…”

And then she has it: “Testingoutdifferentversionsofmyself. I absolutely love that… I feel like I’ve fully lived different lives where I’m, like, a completely different version of myself… we’re in our twenties, we’re figuring out exactly who we are, and it’s kind of so beautiful that we can try on different shoes.” She says that by the time she dies, she wants to be completely sure of who she is. A lofty goal, some may say, but I respect her for it.

In case you were wondering, her current roster of versions of herself includes, but is not limited to:

• Italian Au Pair Sarah

• Globetrotting With Her Foreign Boyfriend Sarah

• Outdoorsy Sarah 

• Casually Ran Two Marathons Sarah

• Quaint Mountain Town Sarah

• And Now, Big City Sarah 

I ask her what her favorite version of herself is. She says it’s Right Now Sarah. “It’s so fun, and I feel like I’m just at the cusp of who I am,” she tells me. “I think it can be easy as you get a little bit older to be a little bit, like, painted or, you know, kind of take on other people’s projections or ideas of who you should be. And I think I took on a lot of that [when I was younger].” But she’s confident that her 12-year-old self would be proud of Right Now Sarah. “I’m loving how comfortable I am with solitude right now,” she continues. “I’m very much driven by my goals, my wants… my dreams for the future.”

Speaking of 12-year-old Sarah, I’m curious about what she wanted to be when she grew up. The Sarah I know now has seen so many chapters, I almost can’t imagine her younger self fixating on a singular path. But as it turns out, fixate she did: she wanted to be a lawyer. She loved the idea of fairness and objectivity, and wanted to feel like she was making a difference in the world. 

As she describes her childhood ambitions she pauses for a moment, and then offers, “I guess, full honesty, I kind of lost vision of my future and my goals.” She admits that she took on projections from others that made her feel small and doubt herself. She remembers a moment, right before graduating college, when she questioned her intellect and whether it would be enough to land her a job. “Which is crazy,” she says, “because I was an incredibly hard worker, I knew I was very smart.” Reflecting on it serves as a reminder for her (and in turn, for me) that trying to perceive ourselves through others’ eyes is a dangerous game, especially when we’re not privy to their emotional baggage.

Her solution to this now is simple: “I’m not going to let anyone tell me who I am before I know who I am myself.” 

* * * *

In the few months I’ve known her, I’ve noticed that there isn’t much someone else could say to shake the foundation she’s built. I’ve also noticed that there’s very little that seems to unnerve her, so I almost expect her answer to my next question to be “nothing.” 

“What’s been the scariest thing about your post-grad life?” 

She doesn’t even pause to think before answering: “It’s all in my hands.”

Of course, she manages to see that very daunting concept through rose-colored glasses. “It’s such a liberating feeling to be like, ‘Okay, my entire life is up to me,’” she laughs, comparing it to the feeling of your stomach dropping on a roller coaster. And if we’re using a roller coaster analogy, Sarah is on a steep incline. She declares confidently that this year is going to be the best year of her twenties. She’s learned what she needed to learn, shed what she needed to shed, and Big City Sarah is ready to emerge in full. 

“I think this year, what’s changed so much, is that I’ve turned loneliness into solitude, you know? Just, like, comfort with being my own person rather than kind of always, like, pining after other people to show me love… I’ve learned to show myself love.” I give an emphatic “mmhmm” in agreement. There’s something about forcing yourself out of your comfort zone that’s annoyingly conducive to bolstering self love. 

My “mmhmm” was premature - her thought wasn’t over yet. She tells me she often looks back at her younger self for encouragement. “I think an experience of so many young women is… really having the world shape them and make them smaller.” I’m immediately brought back to the hours I spent shrinking myself into a version that I thought would render a successful ballet career. I can’t get those hours back. “I used to make myself a lot smaller because I could tell it would make people more comfortable,” she continues. “I was a lot more focused on other people’s comfort when I was younger.” It seems that she and I, like so many women around us, share the experience of deflating ourselves in an attempt at becoming more palatable for others. 

With her younger self in mind, she says that her goal right now is to feel like the biggest version of herself. She adds that she’d like to help other young women through this journey. “I want to be that person for someone who’s like, ‘Who do you want to be? Let’s figure it out.’” It sounds like life coaching is in her future.

“Do you feel like anything is possible for anyone?” I guess we’re back to my pseudo-therapy session.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Why?”

“I really, truly, wholeheartedly believe that you create your reality… Anything is possible when you let go of fear. I think we’re always so colored and driven by fear… Obviously, it’s not an easy process, it’s not just something that immediately, it happens. I’m still on that journey, but I think just letting go of any limiting beliefs and fear [lets you] live any life you want to live.”

I ask Therapist Sarah if she has a strategy for letting go of limiting beliefs. She tells me that sometimes she finds that the best way to get over a fear of doing something is to just do it. Look it directly in the eye, and it gets easier every time, she assures me. 

In that case…

Dear Universe,

I am formally releasing my limiting beliefs and fears that I will never meet Michael B. Jordan and get him to fall in love with me. I am also releasing my limiting beliefs and fears that I will never find the perfect pair of size 37 black slingback Margiela Tabis. 

Amen.