My 2017 birthday is almost here - 2 more days and I will officially no longer be a teenager! Birthdays have always been my favorite thing in the world. Ever since I was a little girl, I would try to create the biggest hype leading up to my birthday to make sure everyone knew it was coming up and they'd know to wish me a happy one.

While spreading the news that there were only 7, 6, or 5 days until my birthday, I could feel the excitement building up inside me over my special day coming up and how much fun I always had being the birthday girl. Ever since I hit age 18 though, I've lost that special birthday feeling. I wish I knew why, but I can only theorize.

My thoughts are this: when you're little, there is nothing more exciting to you than thinking about growing up and getting older and having so many birthdays ahead. Once you start hitting the teens, you feel so special and cool like you'd always imagined you would. But once your twentieth (!!!) birthday is coming up, you start to feel nervous about the future.

I miss birthday parties where the whole class was invited to a big pizza party dinner or a roller skating rink. I miss being too little to care about how awkward it is to sit and smile when people sing happy birthday to you. I miss bringing birthday treats to school for the class so that everyone would be excited about your birthday.

Don't get me wrong, I still love birthdays and always try to make the most out of mine. But for some reason, that extremely special feeling I always used to have has vanished. Now that I am almost 20, I realize that birthdays become less and less of a big deal as you start to get older. Although this is true, I still try my best to make birthdays as special as I possibly can, because I know from personal experience that there is nothing better than feeling great on your birthday. Getting older is scary, and so is approaching your 20's. Even though I don't have that same special birthday feeling that I had when I was little, I'm going to try my best to embrace my entrance to the 20's and still make birthdays as hype as I possibly can.