Have you ever been asked how old you are and had to take a brief pause before answering? Or had to do the math in your head because there is no way that the answer is right? I have had to do that multiple times in my life.

I am going to be honest, this past year I have continuously forgotten that I was 19. Whenever I was asked how old I am I always found myself about to say 18 and then pause because I realized that that was not accurate. I found it hard to believe that I was 19. Imagine how much worse it is now that I am 20.

Now, when I am writing this I am still 19. I am three days shy of 20, but when all of you read this I will have been 20 for a couple of days so I am writing this with the present tense in mind just for you dear readers.

Now that we are on the same page, I just can't believe that I am 20. It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating my disaster of a sweet 16 and now I am finishing up my second year in college, no longer a teenager, and a year away from the legal drinking age. How time has flown.

I know that the adults in my life, my mom specifically, are having a harder time believing this turn of events than me. But to be fair to them, they still remember me in diapers so I can see how this is a shock. As for me, I can't believe it. I mean, there is just no way that I am no longer a teenager and am finally an adult.

I know that technically I was an adult once I turned 18, but I was still a teenager then. Now I am past that and onto the downward slope that is adulthood.

It is terrifying when I think about all that my life will include soon. A real job, not like the ones that I have had in the past (which I have had three of, just an FYI), but a job that I will do until I retire many years down the road. I will have a dwelling of my own (I say dwelling because I am still unsure if it will be an apartment, townhouse, or a full-on house). With that dwelling will come water bills and electricity. I will maybe have to have a mortgage and security system. I will be living alone, which I technically do now but I still go home for vacations and such, but soon I will have a home of my own. All of these possibilities are scary, but also exciting.

But that is what comes with growing up, and that is what I am doing. As a 20-year-old, I am officially a grown-up who will have to live in the real world. And that is something that I will just have to prepare for.