growing up

With adulthood comes a series of up and downs. We hear you, so without further ado, here’s the Clog’s power ranking of adulting activities. 

If you ever feel lost as a growing young adult, these songs are here to remind you that everyone goes through it and you’re not the only one experiencing a multitude of emotions.

It doesn’t snow in Berkeley. Growing up, I thought that was one of the city’s only downsides. Every year on July 4, we would go to the marina to watch the fireworks standing with thousands of our neighbors in the ocean’s cold breath. I stood reevaluating whether I really liked the cold at all and always decided that I did.

I resisted obsession of boy bands and MagCon boys, avoided indulging in makeup until I was in high school, and certainly didn’t claim pink as my favorite color. But why? Why was it necessary for me to avoid these things?

I’m undeniably homesick, feeling stuck at this crossroads of “in-between.” Yet there is something so wonderful, so bittersweet about being homesick. It allows me to come to terms with the fact that I’m in the process of finding a new home, yet “home” forever remains part of me.

somehow in the midst of my losing battle with time, I traded my ability to feel for disappointing wisdom in a deal I never remember making.

I find myself incredibly grateful now, finally, for things that I always should’ve been grateful for.

As Western ideals seeped into Indian neighborhoods, the beauty standards evolved to become exclusionary, only accepting bodies that fell straight.

Why do we see Instagram posts as so far removed from the choreographed skits my cousins and I performed on Thanksgiving?

It's in all the little mannerisms and phrases I've stolen from “you”, it's in the way I dress and the way I define love; all little pieces of you that are stitched into my identity, woven seamlessly into my life, seasoning all of my experiences like a familiar recipe.