Carrie Bradshaw once said, "Enjoy yourself. That's what your twenties are for."
Photo courtesy of www.germanfamilysocietyblog.com
So I am turning 21 in a matter of two weeks. Two. Weeks. It's offical, I'm old. That is what I always say around my brithday, "I'm getting old," but the truth is I have barely lived. Now, I am expecting to live at least until I'm 85 so that means that I'm barely a fourth into my life. But still, it is inevitable that we only have a limited amount of time to live and I honestly feel that I haven't lived enough in my mere almost 21 years on this Earth. Because I live in America, turning 21 means I can finally consume and purchase alcohol legally and I can get into bars, like real bars not a restaurant that has a bar. Normally, I am not really into my birthday, I always get nostalgic and sad and I just don't know what to do with all the attention so I just avoid it, but this year feels different. Obviously I will acknowledge it more because it's the big 2 1, but I am truly excited and also kinda scared to be 21. Like clearly excited because I can go out to bars and such but also in the sense that I just want to live my life differently and truly embrace my age and my twenties.
Now, yesterday night there was an incident where this woman kept commenting on how young my friend and I looked, particularly me. She made a comment about how I looked 13.......13???? Now I know I look very young for my age but 7/8 years younger? I can see it maybe when I'm not wearing any makeup and I'm just bumming it at home but not when I'm made up to go out. Needless to say I was offended. Mainly because the way she was saying it was extremely condescending and it was clear she was saying it to make us feel inferior. She was saying it like an insult. We gave her one star. Anyways, her comments bugged me well into the morning and I kept thinking to myself, how do I get over this? Looking very young for my age has been something I have struggled with my entire life and lately I've been feeling pretty okay about myself but this uber driver just triggered all of those insecurites again, right before my 21st birthday. Not cool. I called my mom upset because I couldn't shake it off (sorry tswift I tired) and she made me realize that it shouldn't matter what this random-- high-key bitter-- uber driver says and that I just need to let it go.
She was right. I just needed to let it go. I've always been one to take things extremely personally and I don't stand up for myself as much as I should. I try to be a people pleaser and I hate when people don't like me. I try to say that I don't care what people think about me but I still do. I live much of my life thinking about how others feel and how they feel about me which isn't necessarily bad but it isn't necessarily good because it means I'm not really doing things for me. I used to have a lot of backbone when I was younger but after my dad died and everything got kinda messed up my backbone was crippled. But time for it to make a comeback. Screw the haters, amirite? Right now is the youngest I will ever be and I want to live as much as I am capable of. I've had many experiences in my life so far but there is also so much I have yet to experience and I feel like now is the time to really just explore.
I've always been the person to be like "I hate feelings, I don't have any feelings, I don't have emotions." Well that's a bg fat lie. I feel a lot. It's one of the reasons why I take things very personally. I am also very empathetic so when others feel, I feel for them too. And sometimes I think I feel too much for others that I use up all my emotions on their life, if that makes any sense. For example, a lot of people in my life are in relationships and I hear about all of their ups and downs, which is fine I love when people share their lives with me, but sometimes I feel like I deal with all of their relationship emotions so much that I don't have the energy to work on my own love life. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it's true. But since I'm turning 21 soon I'm taking this as a time for me to start standing up for myself more, be a little bit selfish and feel my own damn feelings. I want to feel everything but I can't truly feel if I'm too busy thinking about what others are thinking, what they are feeling or how they view me.
Recently, I was out and about with friends and it was the first time I didn't think about what everyone else was doing around me and I just let everything go. Let me tell you it felt so liberating. After that I was like this is how I should live my life always. So many feels. I want to feel genuinely accomplished on a test after I spent days studying for it. I want to feel free and happy when I go out with my friends. I want to feel at peace with myself. I want to feel what it's like to be in love. In all honesty I want an all consuming love at some point in my life, to fall so deeply in love with someone else (my hopeless romatic side.) I want to know how it feels to get my heart broken. I just want to feel as much as I can. But I also want to share these things with other people. I'm always very private with my feelings and just with life because I'm very much that person who is like "I can only rely on myself." Which is still somewhat true but if I have people I can share my life with, why shouldn't I? Again, recently I went on a trip with my family and on this trip things just felt different. When they asked about my love life instead of just saying the usual "oh nothing interesting," I actually shared what was happening with my life. It still was not anything interesting but I shared things with them that I would normally just keep to myself and it felt really nice to just be so open with everyone.
So I would like to raise a glass for myself. Here's to hoping that I have the strength to actually make these changes in my life: to feel more, to share more, to have more backbone. So here's to my 21st brithday and my rebellious twenties, watch out world bc me and my two forms of ID are ready for ya. *Cheers*
So stay happy and stay healthy folks.
AND thanks for reading this post
which is bascially my quarter life crisis!
Until next time,
☾ SAM ✧
