I Turned 20! How Terrifying!

Today I turn 20. The big two-oh.

“Entering: a New Decade” reads the sign I pass driving on the highway of life. An era, chapter, stage, coming and gone. How I’ve dreaded and regretted this day before even living it. Growing up: the wish children make, the trick adolescents fall for, the fate adults cope with. Inevitable and irreversible, try as we may. 

I’ve always hated my birthday. It seemed to consist mostly of secret expectations and assured letdowns. Fostering introspection on life goals, counts of social media posts and “have the best day” texts, reflections regarding the past year, and monetizing gifts and their correlation to love, I can’t remember a year in my recent future in which I did not shed at least a tear or two on February 15th. 

I have always found comfort in my youth, as if it were the primary excuse driving my actions. Both positively, in the sense that I push myself to experience as much as I can while cuts heal quickly and my skin maintains it’s beautiful elasticity; and negatively, by justifying mistakes (both big and little) by repeating the mantra of “I’m just a teenage girl!” in the squeaky, playfully helpless voice I perfected. But now, that all changes. Just one day past 19 and I feel as though I’ve arrived at adulthood. My mood is weighed down by “responsibility,” “resourcefulness,” “stability,” and “pragmatism”-  terms elders have threatened me with, each warning me to come to terms with the fact that life as I know it will end. It seemed to have an expiration date, a deadline, a death note signed and sealed.

But those close to me know that though kind and compassionate, I have never been a very accepting person. “I can change him,” is a sentence I’ve uttered more times than I’d care to admit. Instead of embracing 20, just for today, I’d like to close my eyes and ignore. In unmarred denial, I chose to dream today, to remember. 

Memories pool of the life I leave behind. I can just make out sitting on my bed with my best friend in the world as I strum my guitar, knowingly and lovingly out of tune. The heat of the sun pairs perfectly with the pitch of our laughter. I watch my reaction to a boy kissing me for the first time. My cheeks are flushed, eyes darting between his face and the hand resting on my waist. All the boys I have kissed since seem to be watching me as well. I squint and see my father teaching me to drive in an abandoned parking lot, tons of instruction, not much touching the petals. God, I couldn’t wait to drive- I’ve always admired the independence in the ability to flee. I could’ve sworn I was just sixteen, that I still am. Oh how I’ve loved being a teenage girl. But alas, the day has come and I must move along. 

She’ll be back, she’s in me always. But for now, I am just another 20-something. I know in the grand scheme of it all I am still so young, so innocent and ignorant. But isn’t it a terrifying thought that every second I’ve spent writing this, that you’ve spent reading this is one that we will not get back? We are never again as young as we are in this moment and that is true in every second we remember this. So for this next decade, I hope to be a 20-something who remembers to live.