“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you have to do it every day, that’s the hard part.” ~ BoJack is a horseman
If he had told the eighteen year old where he would be at twenty eight, he would have laughed nervously and changed the subject.
That was his move anyway. Laugh it off. Couch. Eat another cracker.
She was the girl who cried in the bathroom stall and called it “sensitivity”. The one who said yes to everything because no felt too dangerous. The one who googled “how to be more confident” at midnight and then did absolutely nothing.
He must have had plans. Big, dark, terrifying plans. But mostly he just had anxiety and a very unhealthy relationship with his phone.
I’m not saying this to be nice to him. I say that because I know him better than anyone. I volt him.
He thought growing up would be something like that.
Like flipping a switch. Like a moment you can point to later and say:there. That’s when I changed.
He was waiting for the dramatic montage. The turning point. The wise mentor who sits him down and explains very clearly what his life means.
He got Tuesdays instead.
Remarkable, dramatic Tuesdays when he made his bed even though no one came over. Where you chose the salad – not every time, lest you get carried away – but sometimes. When he answered an email he’d been avoiding for three weeks, he realized the world wasn’t ending the way he feared.
Nobody applauded. There was no montage.
And yet, something has changed.
The changes came so quietly that they were almost missed.
He didn’t apologize for ordering food at restaurants. Small, yes. Revolutionary for him.
He started going to the movies alone, which he thought was the saddest thing a person could do, and realized that it was actually wonderful. There is no one to negotiate with. Popcorn just for you. A complete emotional breakdown during the animated films, completely on its own terms.
He was traveling alone—just for a weekend, nothing heroic—and spent the entire train ride convinced he’d made a terrible mistake. He didn’t. He came home quieter in a good way, as if something had settled in him that he didn’t know had settled.
He learned to sit in a room without filling every silence with noise.
She learned that some friendships are seasonal, and that letting them go wasn’t a failure—just honesty.
Slowly and somewhat reluctantly, he learned that he was free to take a seat.
No one tells you that growing into yourself is mostly just…maintenance.
Not a transformation. Not a revelation. Just showing up again and again to the small and mundane work of being human.
He almost canceled therapy appointments. The boundaries you tripped over before you learned to say them clearly. In the morning, when he got up and tried again, he tended to forget after the evenings.
There was a version of her—the eighteen-year-old, struggling with her plans—who needed growth to look impressive. Who needed a story worth telling.
Instead, he was given a life worth living. Which, as it turns out, is for the better.
That’s what I would tell him if I could.
Everything will be fine. People don’t tell you not to worry in a vague, dismissive way. In a special, earned way – because it gets the job done even when it’s boring, even when no one notices, even when you’re not entirely sure it works.
You won’t wake up one day. But one day you wake up and realize that the things that once emptied you no longer do the same. It’s nothing. Actually, that’s all.
You’re still overthinking it. I won’t lie to you about that.
But now you’re doing it with a kind of exasperation for yourself—the way you would treat a friend who keeps making the same lovable mistake. You have stopped waging war with the way your brain works. Mostly. On good days.
You still don’t quite know what you’re doing. But you made a kind of peace with that too.
Anyway, it appeared.
The girl who cried in bathrooms and googled confidence at midnight and laughed too fast to cover how scared she was.
He appeared on Tuesdays when nothing was asked of him, and on days that asked everything. It seemed uncertain, imperfect, a bit of a work in progress.
And as I sit here at the age of twenty-eight, I want you to know:
That was enough.
This, as it turned out, was exactly enough.
About Kalyani Abhyankar
Kalyani Abhyankar is an Assistant Professor of Law at Christ University with six years of teaching experience. He believes the courtroom and the written word have one thing in common—at best, both tell the truth. She writes to inspire, connect, and remind people that growing up quietly still matters.
