This is a realization that is not unique to only one person. The idea that life in our teenage years is just blowing us by and we haven’t really stopped to realize is something every high schooler has gone through at one point or another. However, it’s not always noticeable right away. Before I turned 16, I would constantly talk with my friends about the days we would all have driver’s licenses and the days we would be able to just drive ourselves around, going wherever we wanted to whenever we felt like it. It was such a coveted concept, yet, when my 16th birthday finally came around and I was able to drive, these dreams had just passed me by, and I never considered them, even after months into owning my license. 

That felt extremely unnatural to me when I finally came to that realization. It wasn’t that long ago where I was on my way to a friend’s house to spend a free Saturday together. I grabbed my keys, made sure my parents knew where I was going, got in my car, and left. However, while I was stopped at a red light, and without any warning, a spotlight turn on in my brain, and shined itself right at that idea that had been hidden for so long. I was living that dream I had envisioned with my friends so long ago. 

It was tough to come to a realization like that on such a short notice. It took some time to take that feeling in, but once it was digested enough, I had gotten to my friend’s house. Yet, it kept nagging me. It had burrowed in a little space in my brain, scratching at the back of my head. I spent more and more time reflecting on my life and how it has evolved, and why it felt so unnatural. Eventually, I was able to muster up an explanation that suited me, and the spark I needed came from something I wasn’t quite expecting: LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. 

A switch isn’t just flipped and suddenly you’re “grown up”. I feel like this is a lesson a lot of Disney Channel original movies teach, yet, it’s a very important piece when it came to understanding how I was feeling, and when I finally got that idea, I felt a whole lot better overall. While being able to drive myself should have been this monumental change in my life, it was only one thing. One thing about my life was now different, and while it was a big change, it did not take up much of what I considered to be “my life.” I still laughed at childish humor, I still bought LEGOs, and I still played the same video games I had been playing since before I was in high school. 

That’s the thing. The process of “growing up” takes time. It can go in big jumps or baby steps, but those steps are never all at the same time. This is where the newest LEGO game helped me realize this. LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was released in early April of this year, and I was just as excited for it as I had been for the LEGO games that were released in 2017. A total of 5 years had passed, and I was still filled with wonder and excitement when I realized I could soon play this game. So many things can change in 5 years of a teenager’s life, yet this emotion had remained a constant. The game released, and I have already spent more than a reasonable amount of time playing through it. It’s these constants, combined with the occasional big changes that created this feeling I wasn’t able to figure out until quite recently. Now that I have, though, I am much closer to accepting these inconsistencies and preparing myself for whatever comes next.