in two hours and 36 minutes, i will officially be 20 years old. a fact that scares the hell out of me.

i don't know what the big deal is, really. all the (real) adults i tell that to laugh at me like i have no idea what it means to be getting old, and most of my peers think i'm crazy - shouldn't i be glad the awkward teen years are over? well, i'm not old, i guess, and no, the teen years weren't all that great. it's just the principle of the thing. it's just the sound of the word. twenty. eighteen is an adult in name only. twenty just sounds like the real thing, no going back and no avoiding it.

but then, there really are no adults, are there?

well, it's been a long nineteenth year. and i've come so far, i've changed so much... really. it's not the same lip service and whining change i talked up in those teen years. it's change so fundamental that i can't even remember who i was this time last year. most of the year was documented in this diary; i read the old entries, and i don't recognize myself. and josh is right - it is pointless to look back and say 'i was so stupid then!' well, i was stupid. but that's all part of the learning curve that brought me here, to the person i'm proud to be today, and which will continue into the person i can't wait to meet another year down the line.

college has certainly changed me in more ways than i can even know. first semester was so hard, it was one of the lowest points in my life. for the first time i was forced to take charge and decide for myself where my life would go... and for a long time i simply refused to do that. i was about to run away again, transfer - that's always been my first reaction to every initially difficult situation. if i had left, i might still be in that place. thank god something made me stay.

those people came to me like a godsend, four people that so quickly and so deeply understood me. for maybe the first time in my life, i felt like i could be myself, and i started to figure out what that entailed. and in hindsight i know that group mentality we had was an illusion, we were too codependent... i know i needed you guys. and this doesn't make sense but it's true: out of that codependence grew an independence that i never could have found otherwise. though it's over or evolving - depending on your perspective - and my feelings have changed in every direction, you four taught me - at last - what it means to be a real friend.

and i guess all good things come with a slap of guilt, this included - i wish that i never met benjamin until college so that i might have known how to be a real friend to him. there's a history there (which you can read in excruciating detail in the archives) that i don't know if we'll ever get past now... he'll probably always be my one real regret. it's not that i feel guilty, because i've changed so much that it's ludicrous to blame this lauren for what that lauren did. but i will always wish it had been different. benjamin... you're an amazing person, and i hope so much for you.

the most striking evolution (though probably not the most important) is that in the space of one year i went from the hopeless romantic desperate for love to hopefully in love to not believing in love at all. maybe someday i'll come to the same resigned acceptance about this as i have with benjamin. right now, i think i'm too angry and confused to speak about it philosophically. but i've come to many realizations in the months since i ended it, and one is that it just never was what i thought, and never could have been. no, i don't believe in romantic love, not the way i idealize it. so i lost what was a very good friend basically for nothing. but it's all just another lesson learned.

it's hard to put into words something so abstract as 'i've changed.' it's not like the aftermath of nuclear war, it's not something you can see or touch or explain. but i feel different... i feel better. and those who know and love me best - really the only ones who matter - know i've changed. i'm more confident. i have more direction. i know what i believe in. i know what's important to me. i go after it. i live for myself. i share it with those i love. i love better. i feel better.

and you know what? it'll only get better still.

maybe that's all i'm afraid of.

here's to twenty.

standing in your shoes, i turn and now you're standing bare in my doorway. i only wish that i had been prepared -i'm gonna have to go along with your way. just take the plastic camera out, it's in the pants you borrowed, in the driveway. alive from the first, now i'm denied by the ghost of you.

make yourself a photgraph and laugh at me, please.
howie day