For a long time, I didn’t think I’d ever see myself turning 24.

Or 23.

Or 22.

Or 21.

And it scared me for a list of reasons.

23 was one of the hardest years I have ever experienced so far. It started slow but began to work itself into a year of constant grief and an uncomfortable amount of growth.

At 23, I lost my dad, I started therapy, I started to see things in a different light than I had seen them before. I had broken down countless times and swore I would never get back up from it. I had myself together to let myself break over and over again until I found most of my pieces.

At 23, I realized how important it is to work through your trauma. They really do not lie when they say it leaks into your adulthood and those relationships you have. It’s fucking uncomfortable. It’s scary to think about all the things that you thought was right as a child and decipher how to break down the walls of 20+ years of things you’ve learned along the way. You are not always right. You are not always good for other people’s experiences. And that’s a hard wall to hit.

For the past few weeks, I have been going crazy about turning 24 and I couldn’t understand why. I still don’t get why.

It has nothing to do with getting older.

It didn’t make sense to me. It’s another year, as my Dad would say. I have just felt like everything was exploding around me and I could do nothing but stand there and watch it all fall apart. Everything I had believed before was changing in a second around me and I didn’t know where that was taking me.

It was like my original path had been destroyed and a new one was being created for me.

At 23, I began to understand how mean I was to myself. How much I hated parts about myself. I tore myself down for each obstacle I overcame but told myself I should’ve been stronger. I should’ve done it differently.

I shot myself down to the point where anything I did wasn’t good enough because it wasn’t what other people wanted for me or what they were doing for themselves.

Something in my brain clicked and my mentality changed. It has been changing for months now.

I have come to the realization that there is a part of me that is blooming, the part that I’ve held back for so long because I didn’t want to be too much. I didn’t want to be a burden with my thoughts, my wants or my needs. I have realized how freeing it is to feel yourself open up to the good things that others see in you.

I can’t even begin to explain the feeling of seeing those things for the first time yourself and loving it.

At 23, I find myself missing driving to the hospital to see my dad. I miss the cry sessions I’d have on the ride home. I miss the anger of not being able to hear him laugh again. Sounds terrible, I know.

But what’s grieving without those moments?

I think about my parents a lot now. And I long to be a child and be with them both again.

I remember standing in the garage with my dad and asking him why he watched the thunderstorm. They scared me, he was crazy for it. He would laugh at me and say, “It’s neat.”

As an adult, I’ll listen to the thunder roll through and get excited seeing the black clouds. But I can’t tell him that. He’d be proud of me for getting over my fear of storms.

I take family time a lot more serious now, even if it was too late for me to change something with my Dad. The fear I had of loosing him will never disappear.

I remember waking up early Saturday mornings to my mom blasting music and cleaning the house.

Some days I’d smile behind my closed door because it would put us in a good mood, and it was the little moments like that I craved as a child.

As an adult, I like cleaning at night better. But some days, I’ll wake up and feel the same way I did behind that closed door and I’ll clean in the mornings instead.

They say between the ages of 24-27, you go through changes. Almost like a second puberty. Your frontal lobe develops at 25.

I don’t know if I believe that, but I can sense something in my chest when I speak about it. There’s something about this new age, this birthday, that has me thinking about what I have coming next for me. I’m scared, excited, nervous, and ready for it.

Turning 24 isn’t bad. Getting older isn’t bad. And change isn’t bad either.

Any kind of change is uncomfortable as hell, as is growth, but our twenties are our trial years. We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing. We’re learning the in’s and out’s of life with advice from every generation and they’ll tell you that the ones before and after them are all wrong. There’s no book for this shit and never will be.

I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with myself. No idea how different the next 6 months for me will be.

My path has footsteps that walk around in circles, that shuffle, that stay in place and that have kicked the ground and it’s lead me here.

Finally.

Here.

I’m 24 today

And the door behind me has finally been closed.