Alas, it is January third. You know what that means?! High schoolers have to go back to school. Bahaha. But you know what ELSE this means?! It's my birthday! Hooray, I am 19 years old! Not really sure what good this does me... but cool nonetheless. I'll always take another year. Birthdays are good for you, ya know? The more you have, the longer you live.
And really, in another quick year, I will be 20. Hmm. Am I prepared to be 20 years old? Have I lived enough life to qualify as someone in their twenties? Will I simply blink and my early twenties will have flashed by, and suddenly I'm 25? What will my life look like when I'm 25? Will I have a degree? Will I be married? Will I be a trapeze artist somewhere in South America? Will I have hosted SNL yet? Will someone have named a statue after me? Will I be pedaling hot dogs in New York City? Will I have turned into Liz Lemon?!? so many questions! But I'm getting a big ahead of myself now, aren't I?
I wish I could talk to little-girl-me and tell her what her life is going to look like when she is 19. I'm sure she would have been beyond excited to know. She would ask me what it feels like to drive... whether or not it is strange to look at the road from the other side of the car. She would have asked if I feel cool getting up in the morning and putting on makeup. She would ask me how I knew I wanted to go to college, and why I decided not to go to beauty school, be a real-estate appraiser, be a nurse so I could use a stethoscope, write children's books, or do any of the other zillions of things I wanted to do when I was young. She would want to know why my hair is so big and curly, seeing as I've had naturally stick straight and ridiculously flat hair my entire life. She'd ask about my boyfriend, my professors, my job, the rings I wear, the height I am, the purse I carry, and all the other things that seem so foreign and far away to a little girl. She would want to know if I felt like a grown-up yet.
I would have so very much to tell her.
I think these kinds of things ALL the time. Like, how if someone had told me last summer that this is what my life would look like by winter, I would have just peed my pants. If they had thrown in the details of all the seemingly impossible hoops I would jump through, particularly in school but also in relationships, I don't know whether I would have mustered up the courage to go through with it. Makes the future seem kind of uncertain, doesn't it?
Life is so very funny in that way. Time speeds by, racing through twists and turns and colors mixing into memories and REM cycles and years spent waiting in lines, people entering and leaving a busy building, some bustling their way to wherever else they need to be while others stay close, revolving around as though attracted by a magnet. Cars and phones and TVs and fashions and news stories fade in and out, flickering in the background and out of focus. Moments seem frozen, highlighted by fear, or nerves, or adrenaline, or laughter, or love, or goosebumps and fireworks.
The minutes go by slowly... yet the years escape quickly and unnoticed.
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