twenty-two years of bloom

When you are younger, there are balloons. There are the days of wrapped presents decorating the side table in the living room and the staunch, "no snooping!" as a new one is left.
There are whole weeks of eagerness, of telling everyone, "Fourteen more days!" and counting down each one the moment your eyes open in the morning.
Planning your cake, making a wish list, and pretending to not overhear whispered secrets and plans.
When you are younger, your birthday is no less more important, but it is more....festive.

I turned twenty-two today.
It isn't a big deal, not like being sixteen, or twenty-one. There are no great societal landmarks being passed with this birthday, no permit I'm looking forward to obtaining. This birthday just is.
So, with the grand ages of being young and having new experiences being opened to me now past (whats the next goal? Turning 40-something so I can reach the age where I can legally run for president??), I think there is no better birthday to just exist than this one.

The day is still young, but I have already been up since 3 am. You see, when you are an adult, you don't get as much special treatment on your birthday as you did when you were a kid. As such, I still had work to do and I happened to be scheduled on a very, very early morning shift (5 am - 9 am), which really did test my limits of wakefulness for the majority of my shift.  I think I had two coworkers say "Good morning!" only to be initially ignored by me for thirty seconds until my brain fog allowed me to respond back.

A lot has changed since I first entered my twenties, and yet....nothing has really, truly changed.
When I turned 20, I was working for a newspaper as a community/front page reporter. It was a job I had gotten by chance...and I loved it. Since that birthday, I have moved, left my newspaper job for a daycare job (not by choice, but rather caused by the move), left the toxic environment of the daycare job for my current retail position, and now, within the next two weeks, I will again be employed by a newspaper, causing everything to come a full circle. 

Just, let me say, getting back into journalism was completely unforeseen and unexpected by me! It happened really by complete chance and, its a godsend. I cannot be more excited with how everything is turning back and I'm being allowed a second chance at a job I truly, deeply, am passionate about. Be prepared to hear a lot of posts regarding this topic in the future! 

I have developed a lot of new views, some that differ from my family, some that don't, and I have become more of myself. 

I have made new friends through coworkers, online connections and I have found my heart in a city I once wasn't certain of. I've explored in order to find little nooks in which to lose myself and tiny cafes in which I pen all my words.

I am two years into my twenties, I don't feel nearly as "grown up" as I thought I would have, but the truth is, I don't think I'd want to. I don't think I ever want to.

All of my life, I have been a flower looking for the sun, turning towards the light, and spreading deep and strong my roots.  Some years, the light has been scarce and the growth stunted. Looking back, some years have been more of withering years than growing years, but even that, in turn, has given me the strength to be hardier, stronger, and grow more resolved in future years.
Like a flower, I've bloomed, and I am still blooming.  To finish blooming, to reach the end, is not so much a goal or a journey, but an eventual process and time that I will eventually reach.

Until then, I'll bloom slowly. I'll find more about myself, I will reach up, towards the warm light, and spread my roots into the soil I am planted.

On the twenty-second year of my life, I propose to never be adult enough, to never finish blooming, not until my petals are complete and the light has been reached.

Photo by Lizzie on Unsplash