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Here's To Birthdays

Here's to turning 20 and all that comes with this part of life.

Alyssa Briscoe
May 09, 2016
Valencia College
26
Here's To Birthdays
twitter.com

Birthdays are a great time for separating who or what happened in your past from who and what you choose to bring into your future. So today, May 9th, marks my 20th birthday— and I'm doing just that.

I wish that I could write an insightful piece for you. I wish I could outline how I hope these next ten years will play out. I wish I could confidently say that on May 9th, 2026, I will be celebrating my 30th birthday with the person I love and our cat, in our amazing apartment (maybe house who knows), about to get married, or maybe I'll already be married and I'll be well off in my career. I wish that that's what it'll be. However, the one thing I learned in these 20 years, is that nothing works the way that you plan it.

In 10 years I may be a wife, and a mother; or in 10 years, I may be single.In 10 years I may be in the career field that I've always dreamed or I may be doing something completely different. Frankly, I don’t know yet and that's what’s exciting about it. I do know that as of right now, I can shape these next 10 years however I want to. I can focus on myself and what is important to me. That's what I'm bringing with me into this next phase of my life. I'm leaving my self-doubt and my need to have reassurance and affirmation behind. For once in my life, I'm just going to live and just be stupid because what's fun about living life so calculated? I have time to worry and plan, I have time before I have to have it figured out. I know that if I continue down this road of being scared to live, on May 9th, 2026, I’ll look back on my twenties the same way I'm looking back on my teens — and that is asking myself why I wasted so much time not being happy.

So here's to the next 10 years and to the people I will meet, to the people I will lose, to the things that won't be easy, to the things that will and to the lessons I'll learn. Here's to the mysterious curveball that will be thrown at me that will ultimately change my life in ways I can't even imagine at this

moment. So here's to turning 20 and all that comes with this part of life.
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