5:14 pm - happy birthday

Every year on my birthday, I tend to cry for one reason or another. I’m not someone who cries easily, but my birthdays have always carried more weight than I expected, and somehow, even the happiest moments bring tears. Maybe it's because birthdays aren’t just about cake and candles. They’re little time stamps on who I was and who I’m becoming.

With my eighteenth birthday coming up this month, I’ve found myself looking back. Here’s a review of some birthdays I still carry with me:

5:

My mom set up a tent outside, laced with pink ribbons and little fake porcelain cups for a tea party. I wore a floppy sunhat. My friends came over and we tried to act grown-up while sipping apple juice from our cups, mindfully keeping our pinkies raised. Then a bee stung me on my hand. I cried from the sharp sting. My mom held me while I sniffled, and the party went on.

8:

My dad decided that my birthday was the perfect day to shop for a tractor. We spent the entire day in a John Deere warehouse, surrounded by giant tires and the smell of rubber. I was bored out of my mind. I cried in that warehouse as I watched the sun set through a window, realizing my day had ended before I had done anything.

10:

My mom surprised me with a party at a French bakery. My friends and I wore aprons and learned how to make truffles. I got chocolate all over my face, and we danced to Britney Spears. We laughed so hard I cried, this time from joy. I remember thinking life couldn’t get better than that moment: sugar, laughter, and people I loved.

12:

The last birthday I had with my grandpa still healthy. We played Pictionary. He guessed every drawing wrong and blamed it on his glasses. His drawings were comically horrible; I wonder if he really couldn't draw or if it was to make me smile. I laughed to tears that night. I didn’t know how important that memory would become.

13. 14. 15. 16:

I didn’t celebrate for these years. We were in mourning. Or I was away at a summer program. My birthday became quiet like just another day, and I never told my peers at summer programs that it was my birthday.

17:

I was away at another summer program. That year, I randomly decided to tell my friends that my birthday was coming up. I didn’t expect anything. But that night, they led me outside to “play a game” and suddenly, happy birthday rang out, an ice cream cake appeared, and someone handed me a paper birthday hat. I cried tht night in my dorm from shock and deep appreciation for those people who, at the time, barely knew me but had the warmth and heart to make me smile.

Now: 18.

It’s supposed to be a big number. A milestone. I’m supposed to be an adult now. Be mature. Be responsible. Be taken seriously. Know who I am.

But truthfully, I still feel like little me.

I’m still like five-year-old me, stopping to look at every bug, every animal, every half-stomped flower.

Still like eight-year-old me, messy and loud and building things just to see if I can.

Still like ten-year-old me, laughing at bad jokes that no one else finds funny.

Still like twelve-year-old me, full of stories and things I have to say.

All of them are still in here. Eighteen doesn’t erase them; it holds them.

I wonder if I’m supposed to feel different. If I've evolved properly. If I will wake up and somehow know how to adult.

I wonder if I’ve done everything a seventeen-year-old should. I don’t know if I have. I don't know what the seventeen-year-old checklist really looks like. I didn’t save the world like the teenage heroines I so often read about, or figure everything out. But I loved. I cried. I laughed. I remembered things that mattered. I remained soft through struggle (if that's what the word is). Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe that’s what growing up really is. It's not hardening, not rushing, not knowing everything, but collecting moments and trying, with all your heart, to live them well.

As for this next year, I hope I grow in ways I don’t expect.

I hope I keep asking big questions, even when there are no easy answers.

I hope I continue to say “yes” to things that scare me, but also learn to say “no” to things that don't serve me.

I hope I write more poems that I don’t show anyone.

I hope I laugh loudly and often, surrounded by people I love.

I hope I forgive myself more easily.

I hope I take my heart seriously, but not too seriously.

I hope I stay close to the people who matter, even when the world tries to pull us apart.

I hope I keep becoming, not in flashy leaps, but in small, steady steps.

I wonder if I'll cry this year, but that's a problem for eighteen-year-old me.

Cheers,

emma