letter 1

How does it feel to turn 20?

Growing up, on our birthdays, my friends and I would ask each other how it felt to be older. We knew it was a joke. We felt no different, but we always hoped that one day someone would actually feel something, because wouldn't it be so cool to be grown.

If someone asked me this year, How does it feel to be twenty? what would I say?

Would I say I felt grown?

Would I say I felt like I had wasted so much time, and that life had suddenly become serious?

Would I say I started to regret the “fun” decisions I made as a child, all in the name of feeling grown?

Or would I continue the pattern, smile, and say I felt no different, because now I am grown, and grown people hide, conceal, and do not show how they feel. After all, that is a kid thing. Right?

On November 20th, 2025, my friend asked me, “How does it feel to be turning twenty soon?”

I told her I felt old.

I told her it felt like a weight had been added to my shoulders, like life had suddenly gotten serious. I told her I had started worrying about money, jobs, and my future. I told her the truth, because I did not want to continue the legacy of grown people who find strength in silence.

On December 8th, I told someone else that I felt old, and they laughed.

“Life has not even started for you,” they said.

Tell that to the little girl who was born twenty years ago.

Two decades ago.

Tell that to the girl I watched grow.

I felt ashamed. I felt like I was overreacting. At least my joints do not hurt, and my hair is not turning gray. I thought I was alone in feeling this way, until one conversation with a friend changed everything.

I jokingly asked her, “How does it feel to be turning twenty?”

She looked at me and said, “I am scared.”

That was the moment I fully understood that a new chapter had truly begun.

It is okay to be afraid.

It is okay to be unsure.

We are all figuring things out together. We will make mistakes. We will do things we regret, and we will learn from them. Do not be afraid to live your life, because yes, we are growing, and it is scary, but we are also just at the beginning.