Random thoughts I’ve had over the past month since leaving Behind my second decade of life
Every year I cry on my birthday. I know that everyone says they cry on their birthday, but this year I found myself sitting and contemplating what seemed like every decision I had ever made in my life. All of a sudden, two whole decades of my life were over, and all I had to show for it was a high school diploma and a bunch of softball trophies that had been collected over the last 20 years.
Turning 20 was both a relief and a pain. For one, my teenage years were over, and with them went the embarrassing number of times I wore only sweatpants and a sweatshirt to school. I didn’t exactly hate my teenage years, but I did have a hard time (who didn’t?); it was the usual puberty and figuring out life stuff. I am ready to no longer be a teenager. I am done with the restrictions of my identity and feeling like I don’t belong in certain places that are only for adults.
I’m less than a year from the legal drinking age and I still feel like a baby. You turn 18, and you get the right to vote and are a legal adult but you’re still a teenager; your brain is still developing, and you haven’t even gotten to college yet. I’ve been a legal adult for 2 whole years and yet I still don’t have any experience in anything that feels meaningful.
Those songs about missing your childhood self? I relate to them now. I hear those songs and actually break out into tears.
Decisions are weighing on my shoulders a little more now. I am finally leaving behind my awkward years and getting to the point where the decisions I make really affect what happens next. My decisions need to be justified now; the amount of space for mistakes isn’t as big as it was before. Every time I see familiar adults, they ask what I’m doing at school and what I’m going to do next. What a painful and scary thing to ask a girl who has barely figured out the people she wants to call her friends and still feels insecure at the gym sometimes.
That feeling that you have no one to turn to or no one in your corner? It hasn’t gone away, but I’ve also realized that feeling like that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s true.
While it has already been a month since my birthday, I still accidentally say 19 when people ask how old I am. I am just not used to being in my twenties. I don’t know what’s going to happen in this decade, but I hope good things happen, and I grow from anything bad that ends up occurring anyway. Getting older is bittersweet, amazing and painful all at the same time.