When we are in the throes of our teenage years, we are all told that our brain just isn't mature enough. That it fully starts functioning when you become an adult. And you think well, I'm 18 now, the magic is supposed to happen.

I feel like an adult now, I can do things. I can go to Wawa's whenever I want. I'm in college and I have a checklist of things I have to do every day to just take care of myself. And I start to despair, how the hell am I supposed to take care of a CHILD and a HOUSE when I can't take care of this 18-year-old and half of a dorm room?

Here I go disassociating again, bear with me.

When I was 20, I looked back at that 18-year-old and scoffed. That was a child, and now I am fully formed. I have a college apartment, a Keurig, and my very own candle. That was a big deal because my mom never let me have candles in my room growing up. I would burn the house down, duh. But I'm 20 now and I don't have a meal plan, I go to the Walmart freezer aisle and get a big box of Ellio's frozen pizzas. I pick up paper plates, paper napkins, paper utensils (don't hate me, I'm more environmentally conscious now), and if I can swing it, I get a big bottle of orange juice, for health. Meal prep completed.

22 is the pandemic, is a college graduate, is working from home at her first big girl job. But my home is a house in the old college town with my friends and my boyfriend. First lease with a ~boy~, sharing a room with a ~boy~. I can't afford candles anymore but I'm also off of my freezer aisle addiction (all credit for that goes to the boy). The boy and I started cooking, we developed our own recipes, and I think maybe one day these would be the meals my kids call their favorite.

Now I'm 25, and the boy is my husband. We have a house, we OWN a house, half of a house technically. It's a long story. But that's not why my brain started functioning, it didn't happen when I got married when I got a good job, or even with the house.

It happened yesterday.

When I was mad at someone, and I started walking away, but then I took a deep breath, and went back. I restated my feelings, expressed empathy for their feelings and we talked it out. Revolutionary, I know.

But it IS. I remember that 15/18/20-year-old and how there were all these big feelings but no way to express them but through tears or anger. And not towards just others but towards myself as well. And now it's like the fog lifted and I can see. IT'S REVOLUTIONARY.

I think what it comes down to is living through the bad things, and then things going well again after. And then more bad things, but knowing good will come back. Nothing's the end of the world anymore.

And I'm not on here trying to proclaim my maturity, I think 30-year-old gab will laugh at this. But the hope is, if things are so much better now than even two years ago, I can't wait to meet 30-year-old gab.

Finally, I'm not here to laugh at the naivety of younger gab, she was doing her best and I am so proud of her. I love her. I look back at her and give her grace because everything she was doing, she was doing it for the first time. And she made good choices, at least with the first boy she signed a lease with and I think that was the most important decision she will ever make.