21 Candles

I am sitting in the dark of my room in a strange country and a strange city, far from home. It is my 21st birthday. I can’t believe it. I’ve managed to survive for 21 years. A year ago, there was uncertainty about my future. There was uncertainty about me ever going to study abroad in a place I’ve always wanted to study in. In that moment, I was alone. I was drowning in loneliness and doubt and trying to cling on to some semblance of hope. It was like I was alone in an ocean of unhappiness, isolation and dubiousness and the driftwood that I was clinging on to was hope.

Yet here I am finally. I’ve reached the destination in my life that is my endgame for now.

This birthday should feel special. 21 is a milestone age. 21 is the drinking age in some countries. 21 is when you’re an actual adult and not a bridge between still being a teenager and being an actual adult. 21 is when you should have had everything figured out.
Yet at 21, I feel the same. The excitement and happiness I’ve always felt before my birthdays have been drained away to a feeling of numbness. I used to count down to my birthday from the beginning of February. I used to anticipate what would come for me on the final day. I used to feel special on my birthday. This time, it’s different. This time, my birthday doesn’t feel special. It doesn’t feel as exciting anymore. No matter how much 21 is supposed to be a milestone, it just feels like another year added to my time on Earth. It feels like another year of uncertainty and another year of feeling too much.

Is this what adulthood feels like? Is it the feeling of being lost and simultaneously the feeling of realizing birthdays aren’t anything special? Is it normal to feel it at 21? Am I too early to feel this or am I too late?
Your age is supposed to make you wiser and birthdays are supposed to be a time to reflect on how far you’ve come in your life. When I look back at what being 20 was like, I get a myriad of emotions. Had I had the skills to weave, I would have been able to weave the emotions I felt in a vibrantly colored tapestry which would have been as lifelike as Arachne’s tapestry when she tried to beat Athena in a weaving match.
20 was a bridging age for me. I still felt like a teenager at 20 yet I wasn’t really a teenager because I was past my 10s and I was entering my 20s. 20 was a year where I reached a milestone after finally feeling uncertain for a long period of my life. 20 was the year that a ship had come to save me from drowning in that ocean of negativity. 20 was the year that a life buoy was thrown at me and I was pulled to the safety of a ship that symbolized happiness. Except, to get this happiness, I’d have to earn it.
20 was a character development year for me. Whilst I was still a teenager, I was lost and didn’t have anyone to hold on to. I used to hope that someone would come and share my burdens with me. I used to hope that someone would grip my hand and pull me up the way I would do it for them when they fell down and needed a life buoy. I trusted so many people like this. I thought that they could help me out but then they didn’t. They became people with severed ties rather than people I’d once been bound to. Sometimes they took the knife and severed our ties themselves or sometimes I did the cutting myself and sometimes, the ropes holding us together became taught and managed to break after coming apart in seams.

At 20, I realized that I needed to stop looking for toxic codependent relationships like this. I realized I needed some real friends who would always have my back no matter what. I realized that I would stop giving so much and I would start to only give when someone proved themselves to me.
I met some amazing people at 20. I got to know them through my love for books, through my love for music, through my classes in this strange new country or even through just striking up a conversation randomly at a wedding. Some of these people became like family to me and some became people who I could rely on to distract me from the harsh realities of life. Some left but I grew to accept that feeling though at first it hurt just like any other times it hurt me before.
At 20, I also realized that I should stop looking for relationships. Love wasn’t just about having a significant other. I realized love could just be about me or it could be the love I got from my family – blood related or not. It could also be the love I got from animals and Mother Nature herself. That greedy craving I felt for romantic love whenever I had a thing for someone I couldn’t have diminished into accepting that certain things won’t go my way and that I wouldn’t mind if that someone would just love me back in a platonic manner.
20 was the year I learned to accept my flaws as well as the year I struggled to realize my strengths. 20 was the year I moved to a new country and dealt with feelings of loneliness from time to time. 20 was the year I first dealt with culture shock and the year I realized my mistakes and tried to fix them.
20 was a year that made me wiser. I hope 21 is the same too. I hope 21 is different as well in some aspects. I hope 21 is the year I truly have that growth I’m craving for. I hope it is the year that I finally figure out what I want in life.
Here’s to the 21 candles that will be lit on my imaginary birthday cake and here’s to another year of being on Earth.