So. My last Odyssey article as a teenager.

This upcoming Saturday, the 13^th of August, I will shed the rags of teenagedom and don the gilded armor of sophistication that comes with my second decade alive.

It’s a big moment for me. Turning twenty is overshadowed by the alcoholic freedom of twenty-one and the T-Swift-popularized twenty-two, but I think twenty is an important age because it’s a time of pause. This is the first time where I’ve really felt my age, because to me, there’s a certain weight to the concept of being a twenty-year-old. Like, the last time my age began with a “t,” I had an awkward mustache, was naïve as all hell, and I looked like I still belonged in elementary school.

Now I’ve been alive for two decades, am a quarter of the way dead, and I can wholeheartedly assert that I inherently feel like an adult, and that most of the people in my life perceive me as one.

Freaking nuts, man.

As aforementioned, twenty, in my opinion, is a time of pause. Every time the realization trips into my consciousness, I stop what I’m doing quite jarringly, because I just get hit with a slew of memories, epiphanies, and existential questions. I think we take a moment to reflect whenever we turn a new age, but this time it all just feels so severe. For example, I can literally feel my childhood slipping away. As I embark into the age of the twenties, my brother will start his first year of college, all my siblings have jobs, and aside from help with tuition, my parents have declared me financially independent.

Ah, well. No one can call me a stupid teenager anymore, right?

Now it’s just stupid.

But, regardless, this is a crazy special time, because I’m alive and very conscious of how I’m changing, which honestly is crazy exciting. To feel the pure mold of you shifting and growing as time passes is an exhilarating feeling, and like I said, there is an august sophistication that comes with being twenty. I feel sturdier now, because time has granted me with enough experiences to feel comfortable in a variety of sectors in life.

Can’t wait till I’m thirty and I hit you with a way* different article.