Girl Let’s Talk: Finding myself inside my childhood bedroom

18 and I’m feeling like I am so behind on everyone else’s timeline.It is such a weird feeling to reach this age and not get that huge euphoric feeling I had been anticipating my whole life. I feel like I haven’t amounted to what was expected of me, not just from everyone around me but also expectations I set for myself. I am watching others my age reach all those milestones like moving out and going to uni. I’m constantly being pushed to figure my life out whilst simultaneously hearing that it’s still too early to have it all figured out. And all the while I am still here in my childhood bedroom.

Isolation

Growing up in a household that was pretty strict I often felt quite constrained and trapped within the four walls that made up my bedroom. The same scenery every single day forced me to become overly accustomed to a mundane reality in which the most communication I had with the outside world (besides school events and family gatherings) was through the internet. 

You would think that this scenario would lead me to having a lot of online friendships but no, I was actually a professional doom scroller. I found so much comfort and solace in scrolling my problems away for hours everyday that I felt no need to actually work on building new relationships. Instead of going through the character development my classmates were going through, I was floating away in a land of TikTok dances and Kpop edits.

Awkward or just Antisocial

Now to absolutely nobody's surprise, spending hours scrolling online like a monitoring spirit with little to no human interaction outside of your immediate family does have its effects on a young teenager. Watching TikToks and binge-reading every fanfic under the sun was actually not the way to learn good social cues and surprisingly enough the saying “practice makes perfect” is very applicable to this situation;  talking to real people would definitely have been a better option than assuming how to hold conversations and daydreaming about how said conversations would go.

I like to believe that my lack of social relevance was just a result of being socially awkward but when you do the maths there's a possibility for another answer. Was I really socially awkward or was I just an antisocial teen? Then again, I am bad at maths so it could be either or.

The Incubation Era

If I’m being honest, I lowkey became way too comfortable with my life as a doomscroller, so much so that I was able to partially ignore the negative toll it was taking on me. However, it did come to a point where I realised I had to take at least some control and responsibility for how my life would play out. Reclaiming old hobbies outside of sitting in front of a screen was my first resort. 

Given the fact that I had been practically glued to my phone for as long as I could remember, trying to recall what life was like before my online addiction felt almost equivalent to trying to identify the age of a fossil from the time of the dinosaurs (without the equipment needed to do so). 

I no longer wanted to treat the walls making up my room as bars holding me back; instead I decided to treat them like doors that were yet to be unlocked. Sort of like the roblox game (Doors), I just had to find the keys.

Instead of surviving my room I wanted to use it to grow myself as much as possible. I was no longer caged in but more so choosing to confine myself into a space that allowed me to cultivate myself and invest into things I enjoyed. Like this. I missed writing so much and I am so glad that I decided to re-explore this hobby.

Back to my Room

Finding myself back in the room that started it all is lowkey  refreshing. It feels different in a way since I have created a new perspective to look at everything. Instead of allowing myself to wither away in a space that should feel like it is voluntarily my own, I am choosing to learn; how to grow, how to get back up and most importantly how to finally spread my wings. 

Have you ever felt like you’re outgrowing a space you aren’t able to leave yet? How do you cope with growing pains?

Let me know in the comments but toodles for now. Anyway, time to log off and actually exist in my room for a bit. Thank you for reading, see you in the next post! 

Xoxo Angel.N