It's my birthday today, I turned 23 about three hours ago. I guess I don't really know what I'm supposed to say, this isn't a big birthday, or a milestone, but to me it feels big.
23 feels like adulthood, and I don't think I've really felt that before.
I've been sick a long time, and 20 was an age I didn't think I would reach, but I was only 20 for three months, and then we went into lockdown. I poured a lot into myself in that time, and I came out of it a different person, a better person.
I didn't really have time to acknowledge my twenties, I used that time to get clean and get back into education. I finished an access course last year, and I got into uni. I think I've spent the last three years fixing myself, but I had a goal, and that was to get into university. I did it, I got there. Yet, here I stand at 23, ready to be so proud of where I got to, but I feel at a loss, I spent so long getting better, and getting to this goal, I didn't really think about how I would feel when I got there.
I'm not doing great, but at the same time I'm amazing. The reality is my life is where I wanted it to be, but I guess my head still isn't. I don't feel like I belong at uni, I feel like a stranger, a visitor, a shadow. I came home early for Christmas, I was getting depressed, but I was ready to come home and feel better, but that didn't happen. I came home, and again I felt like a visitor, this town I had spent to long trying to escape, my home, feels lonely, and repulsive, but it feels like it rejects me, rather than the other way around. I am a visitor in my home, and it feels wrong.
I've made some terrible decisions since I've been home, ones that now need me to re think my life, and what I thought I wanted. I guess most of all though, is that I feel lost again. I feel like I have no future, I wanted to get to exactly where I am now, but I don't see anything past that.
23 to me, is happy and healthy, it's about deciding your future path. But that isn't 23 and me. I don't feel like an adult, I feel like a child, playing dress up. I feel lost. I feel unsure of what I want, and in all honesty, I feel unsure if I want to even continue.
It's weird really, I held on for a long time before, but I was never scared of death, I welcomed it with open arms. It felt warm and comforting, like being invited in for tea. It doesn't feel like that anymore, I'm not a kid anymore, when I think of death now, I think of my poor decisions and my life, and the what if's. Where will I end up if I die? What if it's worse?
I guess I don't have it in me to kill myself, and I don't think I really want to, but if I had a choice of whether to stop my life or continue, I'd want to stop it.
23 isn't an age I want to be, because it feel's like commitment. Commitment to living, and to getting better, but I don't know when I really agreed to that decision.
It's my birthday today, but I don't really feel like I have anything to celebrate.