Twenty

Today is my twentieth birthday.

I feel old.

I know 20 isn't that old, comparatively. For example, since my mom is exactly 30 years older than me (off by a few weeks, of course), she is turning 50. FIFTY. I can't even imagine myself at thirty, let alone fifty. It seems such a long time away. But then, even at 17, I couldn't imagine turning 20, and that was only 3 years ago.

I know that physically, I'm only one day older than I was yesterday when I was 19, but I feel like I have a different mentality now that I can officially say that I'm 20 years old. I'm no longer a teenager. I don't have that excuse anymore. Sure, in the United States someone is technically an adult when they turn 18, but no one really takes anyone under the age of 20 seriously. But really. I could have a child now and it wouldn't be totally taboo. (But I'm not going to. I promise!)

And, no, I can't legally drink alcohol yet or rent a car, but pretty much everything else is open to me. And has been for 2 years. But now it seems real. Just think about it. In 5 years, I will be the person I will be for the rest of my life. After age 25, people pretty much stop changing. Everything I've experienced in the past two decades has been leading up to who I am now. And the next 5 years will go so fast. And then I'll be done. I'll be done becoming a person and I'll be who I am. My adult self. The grown up Chloe. Kinda freaks me out.

But at the same time, I'm so happy to finally be a real adult. I can't wait to get out of college and into the "real" world. I want to have real responsibilities and not just homework and exams and quizzes. I want to be able to take care of myself and choose what's important to me everyday.

I'm Holden Caulfield. He wants to be an adult, but at the same time, he wants forever to be innocent and naive to the horrors of the world. I want the awesome things of being an adult without all the world-suck. It's a good thing time goes on because if it didn't I would never have let myself turn 20.