(take a non-alcoholic shot everytime I say “coming of age”)

September 18 has always been a day filled with dread. Dread with how monumental the next day would be. September 19 always had the opportunity to be the next best birthday…or the next worst birthday. Every year, I wake up with a flinch until one eye squints open, my nose slowly unscrunches, and my fingertips sprawl out to welcome what is another year on Earth.

*you’ve gotta watch the video to set the mood*

I remember standing in my grandmas kitchen on September 19, 2010, looking for a cellophane-wrapped Ding-Dong in the cabinet as my dad squeezed my shoulders and asked me how i felt about being in double digits.

“Well, Dad. I guess my next step is triple digits, right?”

He got a real kick out of that one for some reason. 10 was the first birthday that I was like “whoa man, the simulation is pretty crazy.”

And again, this year it sort’ve happened again with my dad. Let’s just keep this going whenever I enter a new decade of life, mmkay Dad? He called me after class to catch up because I have a bad tendency to fall off the face of the Earth once I get to school.

“Well, you’ve got a birthday in about 17 days. The big 2-0. You’ve survived your teen years.”

“Actually, I haven’t yet. I still have 17 days.” I’m a natural optimist in case you couldn’t tell.

I don’t know why it really sinks in so much more when my dad says it. Maybe because we don’t ever really acknowledge stuff like that. He’s never been the one to be all “MY BABY IS GROWING UP SO FAST!!!” because let’s face it, my little sister is giving him a run for his money. Figuratively & literally. He still has to go through teenage years with my brother AND sister.

But actually, it didn’t hit me until literally a few minutes ago. Like REALLY hit me. As in slap-me upside-the-head-with-Sam’s-buttersock-from-iCarly hit me.

Seeing as it’s now September, I wanted to get a little kickstart to my basic girl fall vibes. I need to see photos of orange leaves daily or else idk I’ll probably cease to exist until December. SO, I head to the app store thinking what better app to get (besides Pinterest) to cultivate the perfect aesthetic.

[enter Tumblr]

Once it finishes downloading, I open that puppy up and I’m faced with two options: “Get Started” or “Log In.” As my thumb hovers over Log In, I think of my old handle (“clockwork-noodle”, thank you very much) and decide against it. I need a fresh start, right? “Get Started” it is then.

The next page pops up. I have to enter my age. Nothing weird right? I do it all the time. But no, i automatically entered “16”! You guys, what blasphemy. I felt so stupid, I don’t even know how old I am! But wait, there’s more! I realized that I actually hadn’t been on this app since I was 16. Like the last time I’d seen the Tumblr logo I was still fighting with my mom about me being a good driver. Such a different time in my life (but not ~too~ different because we still argue about it).

Three whole years had passed before my eyes. And by this time next year, when I’m writing my 21st birthday 5 shots deep I’ll realize that this year will have gone by in a blur as well.

I always like to imagine what I was doing on this day years ago. Which is much easier thanks to Snapchat memories. My mind immediately raced to 16 year old Mack again. I would probably be in high school stressing over homecoming festivities because I was that overachiever who was on like every committee. And I ache for that time. I ache for 16 year old me. She was so young and had no idea where we’d end up now. Even though I love my life now and I’m infinitely times happier, it’s so hard for me to let go of past lives. So forgive me if I get all mushy when Tumblr asks for my age and suddenly 1,095 days race through my mind without warning and forgive me if I miss my youth while I’m still living it.

We can talk it so good
We can make it so divine
We can talk it good
How you wish it would be all the time

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And you know, it’s sad to see the best year of my life wane into such a negative period in time. Really, no one wants to have a birthday during a global pandemic. But it’s something we’re all going to have to experience if you haven’t already. I wish that I could celebrate with all of best friends in one room, sans mask. I wish that I didn’t have to worry about going home for my birthday weekend. And I wish that I could not worry about sanitizing the toilet in my sorority house when I need to pee for the 178th time that day because I drank too much water. But alas, I do have to deal with these things and so do you (maybe not the toilet part). These times are tough. I’ve experienced such inexplicable loneliness and sadness in the past few weeks. ~just pandemic things~ The isolation coupled with the stress of a new semester has really taken a toll on my mental health.

But you know what? I bounced back this week. I’m on the up and up. I finally can leave campus after almost like three weeks of sitting in my room doing schoolwork 24/7. I feel better knowing that I can go home and eat cake with my family and see my wiener dogs and hug my little sister. I’m also looking forward to not having to remember to grab my mask when I leave my bedroom. I’m grateful that I haven’t experienced the truly horrible side of COVID that comes with severe illness and the possible loss of life (knock on wood). But I know there are those that unfortunately have had such experiences and my heart goes out to all those people.

If I’ve learned anything so far, it’s that you gotta look on the bright side and count your blessings (as my good buddy Eddie likes to say). If I can make it out of this pandemic with just a few scratches to my sanity, full health, and a full roster of beloveds, I’ll be a happy girl. And plus, who gets to say that they celebrated their 20th birthday in a pandemic? (besides all the other 20 year olds, I mean)

This dream isn’t feeling sweet
We’re reeling through the midnight streets
And I’ve never felt more alone
It feels so scary, getting old

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Now, it’s time for my sentimentality to shine through as it does every year because I have a profound fear of getting old. I’m usually the girl that is brought to tears when thinking about closing out another year of life. I know that no matter how badly I want to, I can’t open the cover of Mack’s Life and flip the pages to relive what were the most groundbreaking moments thus far in my life. (Thanks to smartphones, I can breathe life into some moments via Snapchat videos) And I can’t change anything either. Once the clock strikes midnight tonight at midnight, the nineteenth year of my life will be filed away with all the other birthdays. It’s like when you hit submit on an essay and you have that moment while it’s loading and you’re like “Wait! What if I need to change something?!” And then Canvas says “Nope, sorry brotha, you snooze you lose!!!” At that point, you can only hope to learn from your mistakes and make the next one better than the last.

Yeah, I’m overdramatic. I KNOW. But I like that about myself. It allows me to wallow in my potential.

I’m not a teenager anymore. No longer will teen or -ager be a part of my age.

But I’m glad that my last year as a teen was this past year. To date, it was the best year of my life. I lived more fully in my nineteenth year than any other year of my life.

19 started as heartbreak. And it’s ending in jubilation.

But in between, 19 was meeting the Jonas Brothers and making eye contact with Nick Jonas as he sang “Gotta Find You.” It was meeting my soul friends. It was skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean with one of those said soul friends. Coming home almost every night to another soul friend and feeling such comfort and security. Rushing my sorority. Thinking “how the hell did I end up here?” one too many nights, usually with some form of karaoke as background music. Experiencing a global pandemic. Buying a DSLR camera after dreaming of one for two years. Adopting a stray wiener dog and becoming too attached that I make my mom send me daily pictures. Reuniting with my boyfriend who made last September so tough. Creating a new email account after 11 years of “mackycampbell”. And losing my perfectly curated YouTube feed. Piercing my nose. And my bellybutton. And getting a second tattoo.

So to some of you, my nineteenth year might seem less than mind blowing, but really it was my favorite year yet. I grew into myself so much. Some of the things I mentioned may seem small and insignificant, but no one saw it from my eyes. I struggled A LOT this year, but I managed to pull myself out of it every time and I have to be proud of that. And I’m proud that I can still be so happy and appreciative of small moments. And I don’t feel the need to try to justify the importance of a year of my life to some strangers on the internet.

For the first 19 years of your life, your focus is growing up. And you’re the target audience for the “coming of age” movies. You know the ones that make you believe that your teenage years are the best ones of your life and that if you don’t shout “Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought, useless and disappointing” at your crush in the boys’ locker room right before the homecoming football game and then have the most awe-inspiring makeout sesh in the rain five minutes later– then you messed something up big time. (See: A Cinderella Story).

But, I think the term coming of age is pretty relative. Who’s to say that once you turn 20 you just automatically turn into an adult. I mean, if anything, I’m not even a FULL adult in the U.S. government’s eyes. I consider myself an in-betweener. I certainly don’t feel like an adult. I can’t apply to adopt a child, gamble, or be an Uber driver. My license is still vertically oriented with a picture of a 17 year old me with budding pimples on her face!

Your coming of age continues throughout your life if you really want it to. It’s all about evolving as a person and through whatever roles you hold every year. It’s about learning your strengths and playing to those. Maybe you’ve always dyed your hair, but then you finally realize that brown doesn’t wash you out so badly. Maybe you realize that you prefer tofu over steak. Maybe you make a really big life move like finding God or some sort of divine revelation like that, or you discover God isn’t in your friendgroup anymore. Or maybe you know you just settle for finding your new style of ballpoint pen. Who the hell knows what you’ll do next year or the year after that. But you’d better do at least something different or you’ve just relived the past year. And however much I want to do that sometimes, you just can’t.

Maybe on paper my “coming of age” is over. I’m 20 tomorrow and am no longer the target audience for so-called coming of age movies with the mean girls and the homecoming dances and all the “life changing” moments. But I refuse to believe my coming of age is over. Because all the moments that I was supposed to be finding myself, they didn’t happen like the movies. I did all the things the movies told me to– I went to every prom, every homecoming football game, I had (have) a high school sweetheart who also played football, I was the “outsider” w/ the individuality complex in the popular friend group like all the main characters. I did everything right, but I didn’t wake up today with a sign above my head reading “FOUND”. But the formula didn’t work because I still haven’t found myself completely.

But that’s okay because I don’t think I’m lost.

I want ’em back
The minds we had
How all the thoughts
Moved ’round our heads
I want ’em back
The minds we had
It’s not enough to feel the lack
I want ’em back, I want ’em back, I want ’em

I think I’ll still be “coming of age” on September 19, 2100.

MACK

(the mean girls usually don’t evolve outside of high school, just an FYI)