Today is my birthday

If you want to get technical, I was born at 5:17 pm, so I'm not officially nineteen yet. I remember when nineteen seemed so impossibly far away. I thought it was such an old and grown up age to be. I thought I would have everything figured out by nineteen.

When I was little, I always had a specific age in mind that, for whatever reason, meant "grown up" to me. It was twelve for years, and then sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. I seemed to think that by the time I made it that far, I would have become the person in my head that I imagined my best self would be. I would be smart and beautiful and powerful and socially competent. I would be confident and my life would be in control and everyone would stop treating me like a kid.

Of course, one birthday passed, and then another, and I never seemed to get any closer to being "grown up." I was the same person each new day as the one I was the day before. And yet, I am absolutely not the same as I was seven years ago, or four years ago, or even just one year ago. Being more "grown up" than I used to be is only part of it.

I really am the same person as I have always been, with all the same strange personality quirks. I've learned and I've grown and I have a more developed world view. I don't think that all the things that make me fundamentally me have changed, though. I've just....adapted.

It's not even something that I notice is happening, though. I just live, and sometimes I look back and realize how far I've come.