20/20

Today is my last day of being twenty. Amazing. This year has gone by both unbelievably fast and painfully slow. At the end of every birthday year, I come to the same question: how do I define the experiences of the past 365.25 days? How do I confine them within one paragraph, one sentence, one word? An entire chapter of my life is over, the page is in the process of turning, and I have no bookmark strong enough to hold a previous page for long.

I have unsuccessfully, in the past, tried to create a breakdown of events, thoughts, hopes and fears that would be capable of encompassing an entire year. I can define a year according to guys, friends, semesters, holidays, major events and terrible heartaches. It usually comes down to guys, despite my greatest efforts. When I think back to high school, that's how terms of my life were divided.

Every year means something different. Each one symbolizes something within me breaking free or coming undone or finally focusing. This was the year to realize that I am not broken. All the now distant memories of hurts in my past did not break me beyond repair. I am still capable of love...and of pain. I thought I was immune to both, strong enough to withstand the intoxication of both; I was terribly wrong.

Regret has never suited me. Being clothed by forlorn backward glances is both pathetic and a waste of time, in my opinion. I have spent enough of my life driving using only cruise control and the rear-view mirror. The girl with such silly fantasies and romantic dreams is gone. In her place is someone who acknowledges the ground she stands on as she encounters it, can learn from the past without dwelling on it, and has bigger dreams for the future than her heart can hold.

Clarity has come to me in my old age with a vengeance. I can see my mistakes for what they are and accept that these are things I cannot change. I can see what I want in my future and what I will not accept, based on the things I have learned. This probably sounds very technical and far removed, but it's not; this is as close as I can let anything get to me, because I have learned that I don't want to harden my heart, but I don't want to be crushed by the immense weight of hurt either.

Today is a day for seeing things as they really are. Normally I write this tribute to the last year in a private journal, but today is not a day for privacy. As naked dancing would probably not be appropriate, I'll stick with this blog. Another normally: normally I wouldn't take the time to explain the title of a blog (I love that it would take someone who really knows me to figure it out), but I want to. 20/20 vision is perfect. I found out recently that with my contacts, my vision is actually 20/15. It seems that in my old age, I really am seeing more clearly. Of course there is also the play on words (20/20, as in the age I am, har har), but I'm more focused on the seeing clearly part (focused, seeing; I'm on a roll today). Here's my thought: if the more I see equals the more I learn, then the older I get the better I will be at seeing things for what they really are. I want to see things as they really are.

So here it is, a tribute to the twentieth year of my existence on this planet. Does it do it justice? Not really. I have loved and lost and hurt and felt and experienced as much as I could cram into one year, and this one simple blog entry could never be enough to say how I really feel about it. But once again, tomorrow is a new day and I will be off on another exciting chapter of life, always more thrilling than the last.