Birthday Sex 2: Happy Struggleday

Every year on your birthday, chances are someone is going to ask "Do you feel any different?" This probably comes most often on monumental birthdays like 16, 18, 20, 21 or 36; as well as from strangers or acquaintances who don't know what to say after they say happy birthday and they're stuck standing with you for a few extra seconds. Usually the answer is no. Which makes sense: yesterday I was 19; today I'm 20. One day usually doesn't make a difference unless you shot to YouTube fame overnight or someone came in your house and stole all your stuff at night because you didn't lock the front door since you thought your roommate would be coming home late but really she never came home. The fact is, though, I do feel different. Maybe not so different compared to yesterday, but different from how I felt last year at this time. When I woke up this morning (afternoon), I knew I wanted to take some time out of my day to write. One year ago, on the day I turned 19, I sat in my bed in my room in my parents' house in Burlington and wrote about my outlook on birthday wishes sent through Facebook. As I began to think about what to write, I realized the relevance of my surroundings. I was sitting in the same bed I sat in last year at this time. It was in a new place and had a new look, but when it comes down to it, it's the same bed... ...This is as far as my deep thought process went this morning. I was working on a brilliant metaphor comparing my bed's changed to my own and was ready to sit outside on my balcony in the sunlight with my pen and paper and a cup of coffee (on the balcony in the shade and 100 degree heat with my laptop and phone and a glass of Pepsi) when my serene afternoon of writing came to a roadblock. I'm not going to go into how exactly this happened, but I spent the next hour or so locked out on the balcony waiting for my roommate to come home and let me in. To top this off, my so-called best friend stopped by with a group of people to laugh in my expense (my sweet best friend and a few other of my favorite people came by to give me cupcakes and sing me a song). After an hour of bouncing back and forth between laughing at myself and feeling sorry for myself, my roommate came home to let me in. And to laugh at me to my face (thank you Kristina <3). This was only the beginning of my day and it's not even 5:00 yet. I still have the entire afternoon and night to face and, frankly, I'm scared of how the rest of this day is going to go. It can only get better from here, right? Happy birthday to me.