I’ll be turning 20 in sixty-three days.And that scares me. It feels as though there’s a lot I haven’t done –yet. Like climbed a mountain. Or stayed consistent with my journaling. Or danced in the rain. Or danced at all for people to see.I have been hiding a lot. You’ll almost always find me in the library; buried in books with spines too huge for my arms to carry. But still. I choose to live there. But I’m beginning to understand that swimming in words and fiction and knowledge will not bring me a cake on my birthday or sing me a song.But I want songs. And cakes. Lots of them.I want love in all its shades. I want the crimson kind that makes it hard to sleep at night. Scarlet blue that makes hugs feel like home. And all the fading grey when all the butterflies lose their charm to fly.I want the strength to contain love and to love. The strength to say “Yes, it’s okay to sweep me off my feet; just don’t make me fall”.I want to be willing. And so full. Of love letters and yellow painted flowers, of small honest whispers and of rain. But most importantly, I want to be full of life.I want to be so full of life.Whatever twenty has to bring, I want to be prepared when it hits me in the face. I want to laugh and cry and say “I knew you were going to knock me down hard”. I know I’ll be moved. Shaken. At nineteen, I know that things never go my way and that wouldn’t change because twenty doesn’t come wrapped in rose petals. I know that being twenty will be a battle and a war song. It will be one of the books I read in the library where I can never really figure out the plot.I’m convinced about a lot of things.But today I’m most convinced that turning twenty won’t be vanilla creams and magnificent toppings. (although I’d really like that).But whatever it is, I hope it makes me tough. I hope it stirs me with passion and wildness.I hope it peels away all this skin and make me brave enough to see the raw pieces beneath this core. It will be a little more. And I am ready.