20 Years Of Me.

20 Years Of Me

It's 11:59 pm, 11th night of the the month February in the two thousand and seventeenth year after the birth of Mary's God Child Jesus Christ. And in this 2017 years of Anno Domini, my life is about to complete another year, another 12 months, another 365 days, another 8760 hours, another 525600 minutes and another 31536000 seconds to my already unpleasant 19 years.

I snap out of my neurotic calculations and glance up at the wall clock in my bedroom, which is doing it's bit, ticking seconds and hitting 12 as my teen life marks an end, to my dismay, an abrupt one followed by the constant buzzing of my phone.

Little does that clock know that it has changed my life forever?
I am now 20, two decades old, feeling weird to admit that fact out loud but courageous enough to wobble that inside my head.

I am no longer a teen to crave for all the fries and burgers, to rack over pretty dresses in stores and even feel desperate to gain a guy's attention I've been crushing over lately.
I am now just a year away from being legal but still am construed as someone being closer to responsible and mature, serious and wise. Not anymore will I be addressed as a teen, teenager or a kid-dult. Though there were 31536000 seconds in the past year, they didn't feel like so many. Within the fraction of time, the past year is gone now and so are my days of adolescence and frolic.

As I try not to confide in my thoughts as usual, and fail miserably - just as usual, I realize (yes, as a 20-year-old) that the year of my life that just went by, left me with innumerable bittersweet memories just like all the previous ones did, out of which some I'd remember and cherish, some might blur my vision with joy and euphoria, some I'd try to recollect, some I have already forgotten, and some I'd never want to remember.
A small and bittersweet curve breaks in through my lips, making me smile only to realize that all my childhood I'd waited for this moment and now I wish to go all the way back in time and turn the tables around.

Irony.

As a teen I was entitled to make mistakes, which I did, a lot of them and now as a grown-up I'm supposed to learn from them only to ensure I never repeat the same ones.
As a teen, the hardest decision that had always been was to select flavours of sauces to put in my subway sandwich and now as a grown-up I'd be making the most important life decisions, most of them are likely to determine my entire future.

As a teen, it was a routine to be up and awake and keep scrolling through instagram until dawn, now as a grown-up that I am now, it could get exhausting to keep my eyes wide open past midnight.

As a teen, I could be rude, raspy, brittle and obnoxious, and yet be forgiven for all my sins. As a grown-up, even if I am impeccable and chivalrous, carrying myself with grace and elegance but I'd still not be reciprocated with the same
However, not surprisingly, this is not how the bubly, enthusiastic and vulnerable yet ambitious little 7-year-old me had pictured my not-so-devouring-20-year-old self in these askew circumstances. I always thought that by now, by the age of 20, I'd have everything figured out when this milestone seemed to be far far away.

Dear little 7-year-old me, I'm extremely sorry for your disappointment. I take full responsibility of it.

Yes, I am disapponted. Highly disappointed. For being a procrastinator in all the past years. For snoozing every morning-yoga alarm to death. For getting indulged and dependent on junk food too much and falling sick during exams. For giving myself out to the people who turned out to be nothing but a layover. For never sticking out for people who always had my back. For captioning pictures as 'Best Friends Forever' and never really meaning my words.For not paying enough attention to my family's disruptiveness caused by me. For letting myself and my parents down. For not being wise and rather being incisive and insensitive about everything. For taking everything and everyone for granted. But mostly, for the damaged caused to my soul by me because the healing will certainly leave scars behind, and these scars will always remain.

But also I am happy. Vaguely happy, slightly happy and a little happier than happy. For I am human and fallible. Fallible to make mistakes, human to not repeat them. For I am flawed, and my flaws complete me. For my fierceness is unquestionably inseparable and that it will always be a part of me. For this end marks a new beginning. A beginning to take off. A beginning to fly high. A beginning to falling multiple times. And a beginning to standing tall, each time, over and over again.