This is my send off to 22:
It was the strangest year of my life, filled with more ups and downs than I could have ever expected, and I’m ending it with a new face, a new outlook on life, and more goals and confidence than I even thought possible. When you’re less than 30, life seems to be broken into stages when just a few years makes a big difference. There is the stage of childhood that completely changes once high school starts, and then college happens, and out of no where 20 hits. Don’t get me wrong; being a teen was as horrible as every lifetime movie and MTV special promised it would be, however the blissful part about being a teen is that, in most circumstances, teens do not make that many life impacting choices. Majority of teens just have to not mess up or turn to drugs, and that just comes naturally to me. When you turn 20 however every choice from then forward seems to be life alternating. It’s not easy, 20 was a different world than 19, and 21 was its own kind of magic, and when it comes to 22 (at least for me) I can testify that Taylor Swift lied….22 has been my limbo. Limbo is the medium between heaven and hell and that's exactly how I would describe the 22nd year of my life.
It started off wonderfully, it really did, but then by the middle of the year it kind of, completely and out of nowhere, tanked dramatically. I had lived in a sort of fantasy world, I told myself I wanted to obtain a career in what my major was in school, and that was a lie to myself; I told myself I was healthy, and that was a lie to myself; and I told myself I could keep the lie about who I am going on forever to everyone around me and I couldn’t. I could have taken the first job offered to me that was far away and tried to continue my own delusions, but instead I decided I wasn't going to run away. I was going to stay and make life better. Since I decided to face all of this head on and at once, I found out just how daunting of a task that was. And for a little while, because it was so draining I turned into a bitter person. And by a while I mean a couple of months. If it hadn’t been for a couple of really close friends, I don't really know how I would have gotten through it.
However, in the end everything worked out and 22 ended up being so important to me. It was a year of helping myself, finding myself, realizing my true ambitions, and learning a valuable life lesson. That lesson being, life cannot be planed out, and one cannot expect life to go exactly as planed. So goodbye 22. I know I might have hated you, but you helped me more than I could have imagined. Thank you for giving me all that I need to make 23 a great year.
