I turned 22 last month, and on my birthday, I sat at the dining room table of my home at 2 a.m. I don’t live at home anymore; I need to pay my credit card bill and get my oil changed this week. I’m low on milk and I haven’t watered my plants this week yet. I’m busy, and although I only just turned 22, this year is the first time I feel aged by time.
Birthdays become dreadful as you get older, and I now realize why this happens. Only one person made it to my birthday celebration this year, and although that sounds sad, it was something I’ve accepted that will become more of a norm now as the years pass. Age after 18 unapologetically demands and consumes a majority of your attention, time and money; it is now only you that can control the balance in which these hold you.
I didn’t have a cake for my birthday, but I never really liked them. I indulged in a new magazine subscription because, to me, I see it as the gift that keeps on giving. My mom called me, followed by my father, and they both sent me my birthday wishes, asking when I was going to visit next. I’ve always cried on my birthdays, most of the time happy tears, but this year was the first time I felt like I was mourning a certain chapter of my life — the chapter where I was able to be careless and spontaneous without regard or regret. I now embark and embrace the season where intention and thoughtfulness soothe me, and it is something I cling onto.
For all my life thus far, I thought to myself that my mother and I’s resemblance was mainly physical, but I now see myself in her the more I learn about myself every day. I value routine and communication, I don’t like being late for things, I always carry an extra hair clip in my purse because you’ll never know when you’ll break one. She instilled things in me that I didn’t even notice were hers, like organizing the shopping cart so the grocery bagging is more efficient, curling your eyelashes with a spoon, and never setting your purse on the ground.
Growing up is embracing the changes in your life and accepting that life as you once knew it is gone. I know it won’t be easy and that I cannot resist this change, but because of that, I enter this new period in my life with even more curiosity than before. I want to dive deeper into myself, for myself. The seeds were sown, the season of tending and cultivation has ended, and now I enter the season of harvesting.
Going onward in my twenties, more changes are promised, and now I can finally say that I am looking forward to facing them.