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It’s my 27th birthday today.
TWENTY. SEVEN.
Honestly, how has that come around so fast?
It’s been more than a decade since I left school, five years since I dropped out of uni. Even my relationship feels fresh and shiny and new when it’s been almost three years now since we started dating – I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, but it still does me a heckin’ scare.
I don’t think I actually feel a day over 22, but I’m just so bewildered as to where all that time has gone.
It’s mad how 26 seems young because you’re still firmly in your mid-20s, but 27 creeps up on you and just seems so.. adult?
I mean, what even is being an adult all about? Voluntarily eating vegetables? (Does it count if it’s on a pizza?) Holding your drink? (Still have some work to do.) Taking your pill on time? (Mostly.) Going to bed early out of choice? (Alright, maybe I’m a grownup after all.)
I’m still the girl who likes Harry Potter and Disney marathons. Sometimes I spend too much money on ASOS and think about the consequences later. I have just opened a proper savings account so I can hopefully buy a house before I’m 80, but it doesn’t feel quite real, y’know?
Maybe some of it comes down to having a job that started off as just a hobby in my teenage years – I still write from the very same bedroom (although it’s home to plants and a desk and bedding with a higher thread count these days), but I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like an adult. Some days I truly feel I have my shit together, others I just want to wrap myself in a blanket cocoon.
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I know I must be older because I have a few wrinkles here and there, I have random hairs that like to sprout from my chin, and I actually *need* glasses now. I go into a room only to completely forget why I did, and find myself saying things my mum would. It’s mildly harrowing. I need to stop before I have an existential crisis, but it’s kinda weird knowing all the milestones ahead of me are still in the ether, somewhere in my future – when in my younger days I’d have assumed they’d be ticked off by this point. It’s not even something that I feel antsy about, it’s just not happened to me yet and I’m cool with that.
My mum was pregnant with me at 27, which makes me feel slightly sick because although life was so different back then, I’m nowhere near ready to look after a child anytime soon – at times I feel like I can barely look after myself. All in good time, womb, all in good time.
A little part of me worries that more and more time will pass before I know it and I won’t be able to take it all in, but I’m so ready to just enjoy the ride now.
Maybe I’ll never feel like a proper adult, and perhaps that’s okay. But right now I’m going to buy a nice dress, whack a face mask on, order a huge pizza and open a bottle of something cold and boozy. Because if you can’t do those things absolutely guilt-free on your birthday, when can you?
Here’s to all of us doing our best to navigate this weird world. We’re doing just fine.