Once upon a time, I turned 20 and bade farewell to my teenager status. If only I had foreseen that my light-heartedness was going to pack, too, and slam the door behind its back. There I stood, vacantly staring outside the window, unprepared to grow up. Not that I was caught off guard by birthday wishes but I was gripping onto the last days of my nineteenth year of life.

Teenage years are etched in our memory as the times of non-recognition. A teenager is indeed an undefined human being, no more a child but not yet a grown-up. They are the years where nobody cares whether or not we finished our plate at dinner, nobody checks our homework, nobody takes us seriously. We come of age with the words of utmost offense: “I am not a child anymore!” echoing in our elders’ ears.

We undervalue our youth until we lose it — some of us earlier, some later, and all at 20. Ironically, the sense of being small and insignificant doesn’t go away once we cross the threshold of adulthood. It only grows stronger.

Four years ago, it dawned on me that I had matured: I was 16 and peeling carrots in the kitchen of my family apartment in Geneva. Just like today, it was the end of the school year, t-shirts replaced sweaters, and happy faces replaced doleful ones.

Although today, the feeling is different. Today, the gates leading back into childhood are closed forever. Henceforth, there is no excuse for infantile whining or appealing to mum for ready solutions.

“You must be fierce, self-sufficient and swallow negative emotions instead of crying them out in the pillow,” the inner voice affirmed. “Does the Adulthood Terms and Conditions agreement oblige you to lose emotions or something?” I wondered.

Were I to recapitulate my achievements on a sheet of paper, I would have left it blank out of respect for young people who made a difference. For me, the past few years have been full of both emotional growth and self-disillusionment. No matter how many are proud of me, or enamored, or even jealous, that inner voice humbles me down, thus giving me the drive to keep trying.

Do absent straight A’s on my fall transcript, an ungotten high-paying part-time job and an unfound apartment in SoHo mean that my 20 years of life have gone to trash? Certainly not. How do I know? Because my parents are happy with me. And also, because you can’t quantify success in outward accomplishments.