“The Way We Want”: A Story of Us Living Our Perseverance

By Julia Verna and Sarah Wade

We were nineteen-year-old women. We were both feeling a sense of hopelessness and doubt in ourselves. We were being told by many that we were failing for not being in school. We were just trying not to feel stuck where we were in life while trying to break out of our comfort zone. We lacked the sense of a community that had people who could relate to us feeling stuck and frustrated with the way life was going.

We were nineteen and yet it felt like a lifetime had passed of trying to figure out how we wanted life to be now and in the future. Becoming extremely determined not to work jobs we hated which made us feel even more alone. We worked at libraries and at restaurants. We worked on ourselves while working full-time jobs and dealing with life in general.

Working full-time had its own challenges in itself and made it difficult to focus on how to get back to education. How could we worry about school when we weren’t even sure of what we wanted to do with our futures? We had family and friends constantly asking what our plan was. We just wanted to make the people we love around us proud. The people who were most important in our lives. We were just trying to live life to the fullest and explore all the different horizons surrounding us. There was no way we wanted to wait for life to happen, we were going to make it happen and soon.

We are now twenty-year-old women deciding to make the jump and go back to school. Sending in our college applications and waiting to see the outcome. Getting the results and the emotions that come with it.

There are tons of mixed emotions that we share: fear, excitement, and relief. Fear of the unknown, excitement for what is to come ahead in life, relief that we are not hopelessly lost, and that even though our plans are still not one hundred percent set, we will figure it out along the way no matter what may be thrown our way. We are not doubting our future anymore. We are confident. 

We know what we want. There is confidence in what we want. We are just women living our lives the way we want. We are not failures. We are out of our comfort zone experiencing new things, and striving to do better each and every day. We are pushing ourselves as hard as we can. We are going to prove that we can start and finish our education. We are here today now finding a community that can relate to and understand each other. 

We are going to thrive separately and together. Separately in our lives, together as a community. We are not failures, we are humans working on our own timeline. One day we'll look back at how much effort we have put in for ourselves and be thankful we pushed ourselves.

We are just twenty-year-old women sitting here together writing about our past, the future, and what it holds for us.