Today (April 13) is my birthday. My birthday is a very interesting time for me. Every year, I go through the motions of being so excited for my birthday while being equally terrified by the passage of time. I’ve always been a nostalgic person. For example, when I was 7, we were getting a new couch for the first time and the night before we got rid of our old couch, I cried for hours about it. So change, growing up and time passing was always a struggle for me, clearly.
As I’ve gotten older, that feeling hasn’t exactly gone away, it’s just changed. It’s less about couches and more about versions of myself. I find myself missing who I used to be while also wanting so badly to become someone new. There’s this constant push and pull between holding on and letting go, and my birthday seems to put an emphasis on that more than any other day of the year.
Turning 20 feels especially weird. It’s not as celebrated as turning 18 or 21, but in a lot of ways, it feels bigger to me. There’s something about leaving my teenage years behind that makes everything feel so much more real. Like I can no longer say, “I’m just a teenager figuring it out,” even though that’s exactly what I’m still doing.
I think that’s the part that scares me the most; the expectation that I should somehow have things more together now. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that nobody really has it all figured out. Everyone is just learning as they go, even the people who seem like they have a perfect plan.
So instead of letting that fear take over, I’m trying to approach 20 differently. I don’t want this year to be about having everything mapped out or becoming some perfect version of myself. I want it to be about experiencing things fully, even when they’re messy or uncertain.
When I think about what I want out of being 20, it’s pretty simple. I want to trust myself more. I want to stop assuming everyone else is doing life better than me, because I’ve spent way too much time feeling “behind” or “not normal” when, in reality, there is no normal. There’s just different paths, different timelines and different ways of growing.
I want to take more risks, not big, life-altering ones, but some small, everyday risks. Speaking up when I’d usually stay quiet. Saying yes to things that scare me a little. Letting myself be seen instead of trying to blend into the background.
I want to take better care of myself, physically and mentally. I want to be kinder to myself on the days when my anxiety is louder than usual. To remind myself that I’m allowed to take breaks, to rest, to not always be productive.
I want to be more present. I’ve spent so much time either looking back or worrying about what’s next that I forget to fully experience what’s happening right now. I don’t want to rush through this year just to get to the next milestone. I want to actually live it.
And I want to appreciate the people in my life more. The relationships that have stayed and the ones that have changed. Every person, every experience, has played a part in getting me here.
Turning 20 doesn’t mean I suddenly have everything figured out. If anything, it means I’m just at the beginning of a new chapter of figuring it out in a different way. And maybe that’s not something to be scared of. Maybe it’s something to be excited about.
So this year, I’m choosing to embrace the change instead of fearing it. I’m choosing to let go of the pressure to have it all together and focus on growing into whoever I’m meant to become.