Untitled Birthday Thought

As I get older, certain birthdays stick out in my mind as being different from the rest. When I walk into card shops I am overwhelmed by the years that are supposed to be important benchmarks: thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty one, and thirty. These are the years surrounding my youth that Hallmark deems worthy of celebrating. Having hit four out of five I have to say that none of them were truly what I expected.

When I was thirteen, I was experiencing my first life transition. All of the sudden I have to deal with emotional and physical changes, cramps being the major highlight. The schoolyard which was once the home of cops and robbers became the breeding ground for new couples thanks to truth or dare. Something was either "cool" or "not cool" and by extension, so were you.

At first glance, my "sweet sixteen" didn't seem to be much different than my thirteenth. We were still playing the same games but on new levels. Spin the bottle became intense make out sessions that you just felt wrong watching. This was also the time where my peers began to take their antics on the road. The drivers permit is the biggest peak of the sixteenth birthday. Something I didn't experience until my seventeenth.

The highlights of the eighteenth birthday were far more bizarre. Still a year shy of the legal drinking age, we only had two perks to turning eighteen: buying lottery tickets and porn. We didn't take advantage of the latter of course but it was there. This was probably my favorite year since it brought the most changes I had experienced up to that point. Graduating high school, summer love, and going to university were just the beginning of many.

For my twenty first birthday, I did the most cliche thing possible: Las Vegas. It was there that I discovered that I didn't enjoy gambling or drinking as much as some people. But it was a trip I really wanted to take so for that I have no regrets. Outside of Vegas, the major reward twenty one brought me was another diploma... Now what??

When I was a teenager, I just assumed I would have more figured out by the time I was in my mid twenties. I actually recall a naive conversation with a friend about being engaged by the age of twenty two. Wanna know what I did on my twenty second birthday? Jello shots.

So what lies ahead for me as each day brings me closer to my thirtieth? Who knows. All I know is that I don't want to look back with regret because I wasted my youth worrying about the future. I think thirty something me would have one thing to say to me right now: relax.