In less than a week, I will be 20 years old. I can feel my heart and brain slow as I try to process that fact. Twenty is real. Twenty is adulthood. Twenty is something I don’t know if I’m ready for.
Everyone says there is nothing to be afraid of, but isn’t there?
I think of turning 20, and I am reminded of the inevitable death of my youth. Legally, I have been an adult for the past two years, but I could still hide behind the -teen suffix. I was still young and learning. I could call my parents and ask them endless questions about food or clothes. Just last week, I called my mom when I was too scared to kill a bug, and she stayed on the phone while I figured it out.
Now, I’m calling my dad, not to ask him to take me to a concert, but to tell him I’m opening a new savings account. Instead of convincing him to take me shopping, I’m asking him to help me pick out a safe, reliable, yet affordable car.
I can already feel the independence being thrust upon me, which is by no means a bad thing. I’ve dreamed of being an adult, making my own decisions, and being independent for so long, but it is all happening so fast.
I graduate college in less than a year, with no plans of continuing my education. By this time next year, I expect myself to have left the college bubble, gotten a big-girl job, and moved out of my home. It’s a lot, and it’s scary.
I have yet to ‘find myself’ or understand ‘who I am.’ I am still trying to figure out what I like, what clothes I enjoy wearing, or where I want to live in the future. It feels like, by now, I should know, but I don’t.
There’s a small part of me, though, that finds it exciting.
I get to figure it out as I go. That’s life. We change. We adapt. We grow.
We discover new things about ourselves every day, and it’s exciting. In this new era of life, I get to have new favorites: a new favorite color, a new favorite song, a new favorite purse, etc. I get to meet more people and make more friends. I want to travel solo and see the world. I want to go to different cities, interact with other cultures, and find where I belong.
I want to get my own place and decorate it however I like. I want to make Shirley Temples at 3 a.m. because I can.
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
Henri Bergson
There’s a sense of liberation with turning 20 and being what I consider a real adult.
I know I won’t wake up on my twentieth birthday with my frontal lobe fully developed. Nobody expects me to be a different, more mature, responsible person suddenly. And as scared as I am to enter this new era, I cannot wait to experience my 20s and see what these coming years have in store for me.