Everyone knows that you don’t wake up on your birthday feeling older. We expect it when we turn 13, 16, 18, all the big ages that some how mark it, but it doesn’t happen. At least, it doesn’t happen often, but I definitely woke up on my 20th Birthday feeling somehow more mature.
I often spend Birthdays being miserable and feeling like I’m wasting my life, one of the many perks of depression and anxiety, but my 20th was different. Since the age of 16 I’ve moved out of my parents house into one with my boyfriend, kept my cats alive, made some great new friends, created this blog that I’m hugely proud of and formed better relationships with a lot of my family.
I’ve tried my best for so long to make every day as good as it can be, and that means some days are still terrible but for the most part I’m doing pretty well at keeping things good. I’m allowed to be proud of that.
I moved out with my boyfriend at 16 and took a very ‘house-wife’ type role on since Rich was working, I just had cats instead of kids and we’re not married, so maybe I just ended up maturing a bit faster than I would have otherwise, but I definitely feel in my 20’s now.
It’s quite a comfortable feeling I think, feeling your age. I feel a little more confident and less anxious because I feel like I just don’t care as much about other peoples opinions as I did in my teen years. I used to get so caught up in what people thought of me that I had difficulty being myself, now I’m both more comfortable with myself as a person and less bothered about the opinions of others.
I might just be thinking a little far into this, I’m not sure, but either way I feel like I’m at a good point in my life right now and I’m really enjoying it.
-Dana
Carry on Beautiful! 