20

I think that turning 20 years old is very scary. It’s an age at which I can no longer consider myself a child as I have done for my whole life. So much can happen when someone is in their 20s as well: finally finish studying and start working, get married, or even start a family. These things I haven’t even properly considered during my teenage years, but I know that I will soon have to seriously consider at least one of these things.

I’ll admit that my teens have felt like they have lasted for quite a long time now. In fact it feels like I have spent my whole life as a teenager and it gets quite difficult to remember anything before. However I have noticed that the past couple of years have gone by especially fast. I think this is because as I get older I also get busier and so more of my time is being occupied, which does make it seem like time is going by faster. I just hope that this effect does not continue or even increase as I start working in my 20s, because I want to have time to just be able to enjoy life as it is.

I feel like if I could go back to when I was 11 or 12 that I would try to enjoy my teenage years more than I might’ve actually done. But then I’m sure many people would want to go back to their teenage years if they could. It was a period of time when you can live life relatively carefree and be able to try a lot of new things. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post: as a person gets older, the decisions they make tend to become more important and have a bigger effect on their life; and so I think there is a weight that comes with being 20 which is responsibility. It is as if the decisions I make now can have a large rippling effect on the rest of my life, but I’m sure a lot of risks will still have to be taken.

As a teenager, there are not many high risk decisions that have to be made as most of them are made by the people who look after us. However when it comes to decisions like ‘Should I take a job in another country?’ or ‘Is he/she the perfect person for me?’ they can carry quite a bit of pressure on making the right choice. I guess it’s because these decisions can have larger repurcussions on the rest of our lives.

I am also excited about turning 20 though. Although I will miss being a child and a lot of the things I can’t do anymore due to my age, I know that there are many exciting opportunities ahead in my 20s. At the moment it is like there are many doors ahead of me that I can take, some are more difficult to open than others but I know that if I work hard enough then my 20s can be a very rewarding decade.