I turn twenty-four in five days.

It’s time to start eating healthier, book your own dentist appointments, and realize that everyone you once knew is married or having kids.

Then there’s you, still unsure of what you want to be, drinking day old coffee, and pretending that your body isn’t being affected by poor choices.

You’re a bit stranded as you watch life pass you by, but that changes. Once you let go of the previous goals you once had ambition for and substitute them for new ones, you’ve grown.

This is the moment where the eighteen-year-old you evaporates into memories, no longer will you eat frozen food inserted in an air fryer.

The younger you wanted tattoos and drink all night then go to work at dawn. You find four grey hairs at the back of your head and you freak out.

We really set so many unrealistic standards that we do not meet in time. Which is why I have decided, for my twenty-fourth birthday, I am going to live more in the moment. I have stressed a lot over a future that is never unprecedented, I want the world to move me around instead of the latter.

I want to work on my relationship with myself, be fully comfortable in my skin. I want to live a life I am proud of.

Happy birthday to me.