To Grow Up..

"happiness comes with the capacity
to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to
think freely, to risk life, to be needed."

    In exactly 54 days... I will be turning 21 years old. A day I have been waiting for since I first learned what alcohol and bars were.. yet the excitement I felt up to this point has begun to be taken over by an actual knot in my stomach. When did I grow up?

       At work the other day, my friend Nicole and I were discussing how amazing it is that we are soon going to be legally aloud into bars, and it sort of hit us as a shock.. 21. The thought that we would never be kids again sent an uncomfortable chill throughout our bodies. Turning 18.. 19.. even 20 are just less intimidating ages.. but 21.

     As I was laying in my bed this morning, I replayed all of my birthdays since the age of 16, and honestly I cant believe it's been 5 years since my sweet 16, seems like it was just yesterday. It's like our whole youth we always want to be one year older.. one step closer in life to where we want to be.. it's never good enough.. until you turn 21.. now I wish I could go back a year every birthday. 

    I get so emotional when I think about never being a teenager again. I mean, I've had the responsibilities of an adult for a very long time, but just the fact of telling others around me that I'm an adult.. and actually being recognized as one actually creeps me out. Like this is it.. this is the prime of my life.. I always told myself as a teenager that I would be doing so many things by the time I turned 21, and here I am and I definitely have a lot of expectations to live up to. 

    I guess it doesn't make sense to those who are still so young and naive, but hopefully, those who are at that point or way beyond it can relate to me in the fear of growing old.. of never being a kid again.