Ah, the big two-oh.
Just like most other birthdays, turning twenty doesn't feel much different. Everyone's got birthdays and everyone turns twenty eventually. You wake up and it's not like you can feel you're magically another year older. It's been three hundred and sixty-five days in the making. This is the anti-climactic climax.
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Twenty's the number where you're teetering on the edge, just waiting for the next big thing to happen. You're not twenty-one but you're so ready to be twenty-one. It's another year before the big one, another year before you can really go all out and have the birthday you've been waiting for.
Twenty is a stepping stone to something bigger.
You might have a crazy night. You might have endless celebrations. But it's not quite the celebration you want. Even if you can somehow manage to go out on the town, you can't guarantee to take all of your friends along with you.
So close. But not quite.
Although twenty doesn't mean anything big, it's still, at the very least, something nostalgic.
It's a goodbye to being a teenager.
Congratulations, you've beat out teen pregnancy, you've survived childhood, and you've outgrown teen angst.
Yep. Teen angst is dead because now it's just called "being an adult."
I don't feel that much more of an adult than I did a week ago. I already pay my rent, call the cable guy when things go wrong, go grocery shopping at noon with all the neighborhood moms. I cook for myself and drive myself to school and work.
Maybe that's more than a lot of twenty-year olds out there. I've never lived in a dorm, never had a meal plan, never had to deal with RAs and the like. I did that kind of growing up -- the living on your own, independence kind -- when I was eighteen-years-old and diving right into college for the first time.
So my twenty isn't that different from my nineteen and my eighteen.
Twenty is just another year of me.
But when I step back and think about it, this means that I've lived twenty whole year, two entire decades, on this earth. It's incredible to think that so much time has passed. That so many trends have come and gone. Planets discovered and taken back, all in my lifetime.
I've had twenty years to grow and learn, to build my personality and find myself, to establish myself as a person on this earth.
I've had twenty years to make gains.
But twenty years to make mistakes.
I'm proud of what I've accomplished and I'm proud of where I've come from. I've had amazing friends and the best family. I've had endless support and so much love.
Twenty years worth of love.
It's around the time to start having my quarter life crisis. I've already had one quarter-life crisis, reevaluating my life choices and my endgame plan. I've changed my major and made huge decisions. I can't believe I've lived out a quarter of my life. But I'm so glad that I've lived it the way I have.
So cheers to year twenty and everything it may bring.
Twenty-one, though? Can't wait to see you next year.
