140,232.

The number of hours I’ve spent waiting for this day.

Today is my not-so-sweet 16th birthday. The closer these 24 hours loomed, the more I realized how much I was dreading them. Birthdays are supposed to be fun and entertaining–not unsettling.

“This is going to be my year!” could be a motivational mantra, but it works equally well as a premonition.

The “sweet 16” hype has set my expectations absurdly high. I’ve spent my entire life dreaming of a Sixteen Candles moment, where everything comes together and I get my own metaphorically unattainable Jake Ryan.

As a child, I was inculcated with the reckless adolescent wonderland that was ‘age 16’. I’ve been idolizing it as the year of suburban idylls since I was a lonesome third grader, watching Nickelodeon’s “6Teen” religiously on school nights.

I was enamored. I’d voraciously devour novels and adhere to high school TV show characters, trying desperately to experience their lives with a sort of vicarious glory. They gave me something to aspire toward, a romanticized yet concrete goal–an “I can’t wait until then!”

But my hopes for being 16 might have been a little too high: indefatigable friendship, clichéd romance, and superlative academics aren’t that easy to accomplish.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m excited to restart the annual cycle of maturity and stop identifying myself as “almost 16” (which usually starts about one month after my birthday’s passed). There’s an imminent uncertainty about the upcoming year brewing in the distance, though, and it’s not something easily ignored.

What even makes being sixteen so special? Aside from the fact that I can legally vote for the Nicaraguan president and get married in Scotland without parental consent, I can’t exactly pinpoint it. Apparently it’s supposed to mark a “transition to womanhood,” a turning point in life where everything is glorified and idealized and suddenly starts to fall into place. That seems a little subjective to me…and definitely more than a little frightening.

But maybe that moment won’t come this year. It might never come, and I should be okay with that. I don’t want to head into a year with the added stress of making sure it falls nothing short of extraordinary. I don’t want to force experiences just to satisfy mere conjecture. And I most definitely don’t want to play God and orchestrate my fate. Just because this is supposed to be the year of memories, of transformation, or of wisdom doesn’t mean those things will actually happen.
Maybe this is purely speculative. Maybe the second I turn 16, I’ll undergo a sudden metamorphosis into a sophisticated, responsible “woman”. The truth is, I don’t know what this year will have in store for me–but I’m sure I’m not going to sit around waiting to find out.

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on Jan. 27, 2014.