When the world went into lockdown last March, I was eighteen years old. I was just about to graduate high school, my brother was about to graduate college in May, and my sister had just left two months earlier for a job in Hong Kong. I am turning twenty years old next week.
In many ways, I cannot believe that an entire year has already passed. The years tend to go by faster and faster, but this year in particular seemed to move with a certain kind of swiftness- one moment it was a soft summer day, and then autumn with the changing of leaves and the evening skies, and winter with its cold breath. Now, April. Flowers are blooming, the air is tinged with the sweetness of honeysuckle and spring, and I am turning twenty next week.Â
I do not mean to be dramatic (I am only turning twenty, aren’t I?) but I have never had a great relationship with birthdays. On one hand, I’m afraid of turning older and everything that comes with it. But I think even more so than the wrinkles and laugh lines I’m afraid of what I’ll lose, or what I’ve already lost. The hardest part about turning twenty is that I never even felt like I was truly a teenager. I feel grief for something I never even had. I feel like I’ve lost something that was never even mine.
I don’t even necessarily mean the classic teenage clichés (although I would have liked to have had some noteworthy experiences- stargazing with friends, driving with the windows down and radio blaring, prom night, recklessness and carelessness and feeling invincible).
For two years I lost myself in a wave of anxiety, and I couldn’t break through the surface no matter how hard I tried. I was trapped by an invisible weight and yet constantly floating, my feet never touching the ground. Each day moved so fast and I felt like I would just open my eyes and it would be dark, the sun setting, leaving the world cold.
Yet, I’ve come to realize that the beautiful thing about time is that it passes. For two years I felt like I was in a dream, like I was a bystander to my own life, watching days and months slip away. Two years is a long time, but two years went by fast and today I feel better. Not healed. Not perfect. I don’t know if I ever will be. But I’m doing better. It’s the little things that count the most.
I’m turning twenty next week. And I’m preparing for the jokes from my friends and parents, the “You’re so old” and “You don’t look twenty” and all the other sayings that fuel my existential dread, but I also know that everything is going to be okay. It’s one day, it doesn’t change much. Time ticks on with its gentle beat. That’s the beauty then. It’s only life. It has always been.