At eighteen, in that becoming summer after high school graduation, I was on the brink of two different mes—childhood Ryan and early adulthood Ryan. Over that summer break, over one particular evening, I gathered that the life I once knew was no more. The day previous it was intact, living inside me forever it seemed. Then, as if a switch flipped inside my heart, it was gone.
I was alone, driving at sunset in my F-150 truck along the country backroads between Oklahoma City and Norman, when I sensed I’d never again feel most of things that made me feel myself. They were lost to nostalgia. Never again would I hear one of my mother’s bedtime stories. Never again would I trick or treat in my grandma’s handmade costumes. Never again would I practice curveballs with my grandpa from his backyard pitching mound. Never again.
It had been years since I’d lived those memories, but I had not yet processed their exit from my life. When I’d thrown that last pitch to my grandpa, I didn’t know it was our last game of catch. When I dressed up as a Ninja Turtle, I didn’t know it was the last time I’d be Donatello. When I was tucked into sleep, I didn’t know it was the last tuck.
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Time, once a preconception, was concepted. Is this life? I pondered, tearfully tracing my way back home, weeks away from starting college, and for the first time, grieving time, to move into my next stage of life.
Now at thirty-four, I am back on a brink, this time between early adulthood and middle age—according to Erikson—grieving different, necessary, unrelenting losses.
Here, it seems I can’t go a day without making a trade. No matter the choice I make, I have to sacrifice something I want. It wasn’t always this way, but again with the flip of a switch, my life is different.
Should I finish this piece of furniture or help my wife with dinner? Do we spend Thanksgiving Day at her parents or mine? Do we stay in Carolina for a few years to grow our careers or go back to Oklahoma to spend more time with our family? When do we have kids?
Like that summer after high school, it’s taken time for realization to catch up with reality. I’ve been making consequential choices for years, decades even. But now, all of a sudden, I cannot escape consequence. Gone are the afternoons of day-drinking without a hangover. Gone are the Saturdays of all-day college football binging without marital strife. Gone are the days of ignorant bliss, assuming things work themselves out.
It’s as if I was walking in the mountains, enjoying the birds and the hills, when suddenly I found a bar and two forty-five-pound plates resting on my shoulders, unable to get it off. Every step is important, heavier, complicated, and accounted for, by me. There are no more easy steps.
Judith Viorst, author of Necessary Losses—a book recommended by a mentor during my psychiatry residency—writes, “As for our losses and gains, we have seen how often they are inextricably mixed. There is plenty we have to give up in order to grow. For we cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go.”
I am losing my invulnerability to responsibility—a needed component of early adulthood—to step into fully consequential adulthood. Never again can I sit back and wait. Never again can I try to make everyone else happy. Never again can I abdicate ownership of my life. Never again.
I must make complicated, consequential choices every single day. If forced to take a guess, I’d say this is middle age, where everything suddenly matters just like it always has, but now I can see it. And that is an incredible gift from a very necessary loss.
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