Worthy of love?

The name "Amanda" is Latin and means "worthy of love." It's a fact I've always been happy about, as well as secretly amused. Such irony, that they would pick a name so closely resembling my inner conflicts. I know, on a rational level, that as a human being, and a decent one at that, I could be called worthy of love. Yet the deeper, more tender, parts of me and my subconsious raise doubts and insecurities. My siblings got into a discussion today about their crush antics as children. Ash pressed me to reveal my own embarrassing stories and was disappointed when I revealed that I had none. How strange...

But it's true. I can vaguely remember having crushes on boys in middle school, remember having a few in high school, yet I've never engaged in any of the totally melodramatic and completely normal teenage antics when it comes to romance. In truth, I've always been skeptical of kids who date in school. I don't know if I believe that you can meet someone when you're so young and spend the rest of your life with them, when so many at that age don't even know who they are as individuals yet. It always seemed strange, and stupid, to me, that while already entangled in the quest for identity, boys and girls would drag significant others into the whole mess. No wonder teenagers are so emotional. They don't know how to take things one at a time.

Impatience has its perks, however. You certainly make more mistakes and end up in more mishaps, but in the end, many grow and wisen up faster than their peers. Even if they don't realize it at the time. For me, at times I regret the wall I kept between myself and my peers. I thought I was doing it to be practical and responsible, but I realize now that those two characteristics, while admirable, sadly oppose what a teenager should want to be. It's not that I wasn't impatient; instead, my impatience had a different direction and a different goal. I wanted to grow up, not to graduate so I could be free to move away and fly the coop, but so that the gap between my physical age and the age of the person inside my head would lessen. If I grew up, I would be closer to the image I had of myself, someone mature and wise, who wouldn't make mistakes or be irresponsible like others her own age. I was so arrogant...still am.

But I'm starting to learn humility. Hindsight is 20/20, as Pops like to say. I'm comfortable enough with who I am now that I can look back and laugh and get just a little sad at missed opportunities to have fun and be a kid. I took them for granted. Time flies with or without your urging. But it's a bit more heartbreaking when you did urge it to, and you wake up one day, almost done with college and terrified, wondering how many more years will have passed the next time you wake up thinking of the past. "Carpe Diem." I have hope that one day, I'll be able to take hold of that motto and live by it. I want it. Just as I want to prove that I can live up to my name.