So I'm 21 Today.
It's the last "big" birthday I'll have for many years, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it.
On one had, though I'm not a big fan of alcohol, it's nice knowing that I canpurchase/consume it if I wish. I don't like being told what I can and can't do, so my new-found ability to decide myself if I want to drink or not is kind of liberating. Plus now I can go to all the music gigs that are held in bars that I couldn't go to before.
Because I don't see myself ever being an even moderately heavy drinker, though, the part about my birthday that I'm having mixed feelings about is the growing up part. I don't feel like I should be twenty-one years old. For some reason in my mind I'm perpetually stuck at seventeen. So it still surprises me sometimes when I realize that I haven't been seventeen for many years. I don't know why I see myself at that age, but I do. Just like I will forever see my grandma in her mid-sixties and my mom in her mid-thirties, even though that was nearly ten years ago.
The thing about growing up is that it sounds nice until you actually get there. When I was in high school I just wanted to get out of the house, get out of the small city I grew up in, and be able to find out who I really am outside of those confines. Now that I'm in my third year at university, I'm realizing that leaving home means having to meet new people, make new friends, do things on my own, pay my own bills, problem-solve by myself. I'm enjoying myself and I definitely don't want to go back to high school, but it is an interesting feeling when you realize that all those years of playing house with your sisters, and you're not playing anymore.
Another thing about time and growing up is that it never stops. I am twenty-one years old. In exactly one year I will be twenty-two years old. Nothing I can do will stop that from happening. In a few short months I will be done with my junior year of college. While I'm looking forward to senior year, that also means that I have less than a year to make decisions about what I want to do after college, find a job, find a house, decide on whether or not I should move back in with my family, figure out what I want to do with my life. I can't put those decisions off forever. I know I have plenty of time to figure the distant future out, but the near future is getting nearer and nearer.
Sometimes Oftentimes I wish I could just grab time by its tail and hold it still for a while. I like my life now. I know I'll like it in the future, too, but I just want to enjoy the now for a little while longer.
So I'm going to.
I'm going to celebrate my birthday with the best group of friends I could ever ask for.
I'm going to make the most of the rest of this semester.
I'm going to do the same for next semester.
I'm going to figure things out about my future as they come, instead of worrying about something I have no control over right now.
I'm going to live in this moment.
Because I can.
Because it makes sense.