Ten years ago, I was a college graduate working my first real job during the country’s financial crisis. I was living back at home with my parents, nursing a fresh breakup and insecure. It was not the adulthood I had pictured during high school or college.
False Expectations For My Twenties
An apartment in a new big city with tall ceilings and plenty of white space, my fiancé pouring me coffee in the morning as I read a magazine, and not just any magazine, but the one I worked at… these were the images I fantasized about. Little did I know the US would undergo a major financial crisis the year I graduated and I’d break up with who I thought was the love of my life.
Needless to say, it was a sobering introduction to adulthood. It felt closer to an adolescence 2.0 as my parents and I tried to figure out how to treat me like an adult while I was sleeping in my childhood room. Dating, of course, felt weird. I never wanted the random guys I met while out at bars to come to my door, something that infuriated my parents as they told me those guys had no manners. Little did they know I told them not to get down because it would feel less like a proper adult date and more like my high school boyfriend taking me out.
Profound Lessons On Becoming An Adult
Life was strange and it would be some time before I found my footing and moved out. Even then, I felt as if I stumbled my way through my twenties, one lesson at a time. Sound familiar? This is the inspiration behind my book Embrace That Girl.
While the book is literary nonfiction based heavily on my own experiences, it does take on its own form. Embrace That Girl is my story, sure, but it’s the story of many women my age who were struggling with self worth, heart ache, identity, sex, relationships, family dynamics and loss.
I wrote the book I would have wanted to read that first post-college year as I showed up to my job early having been woken up by my parents, even after I expressly told them I had an alarm and to please stop because it felt like I was in school when they did that. I wanted to hear someone else’s normal, relatable story so I could find myself in it. I wanted a millennial coming of age adult story that wasn’t cheesy, and yes, maybe one that reflected the experience of being a second generation immigrant child. There were so few mainstream examples of that at the time, and none told from a Cuban-Spanish perspective.
On a practical note, attending a self help seminar was the actual catalyst and inspiration for this book. Five years ago, I attended a seminar that introduced a way of thinking that would forever alter my perspective. The idea that I am constantly creating my experiences, that I have the power to transform any situation, that life is not happening to me but by me. It went against every angsty thought I ever had about heartache, jobs, the way the world worked. How could I have the power to change anything when we all know we’re cogs in a system, playing by the rules set before us, helpless?
Self Love and Empowerment
I have never been able to look at my life the same since. Yes, we live in a world where often times other people make decisions that shape our lives without our control or say so. It’s true, and despite that, this quote pretty much sums up what I learned at the seminar:
“You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.” – Cheryl Strayed
Looking back at my twenties, I stopped seeing a string of events that unfairly happened to me, I saw a decade of circumstances I created so that I could be the person I was always meant to be. It was the single most powerful lesson of all. It was the freedom I craved and one that comes when we embrace our true self–– including all the layered, complicated, embarrassing parts.
That is the inspiration behind Embrace That Girl.
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