it's my party and i'll cry if i want to.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm well aware of how ridiculous this is. You may even lose a few brain cells by reading this. I'm just sayin'.

I'm terrified of turning 26.

Yup, pretty ridiculous.

I know that 26 is young. But it's four years closer to 30 than twenty-five, and that makes me scared. Twenty-six sounds so important and mature and adult-like, and I don't want to be that. I'm not ready to be that.

I set myself up for this kind of stress and disappointment. When we were in grade school, we wrote an essay on where we saw ourselves in 10 years. I was probably 12 when I wrote my essay, and I saw myself as a 22 year old wife and mother. Really? 22? Because when I turned 22, I was just graduating college and crying and trying to figure out if I was ready for this world because I wasn't really sure if this world was ready for me.

At 18, I entered college gave myself a 5 year goal: I saw myself as a successful business person living in another city. Now here I am, ten days shy of my 26th birthday, and I'm living in the same town I swore I wouldn't in at twenty-two. I'm working the same job as I have been for the last five years. Not a whole lot has changed, except for my last name.

So at 26, I feel like all sorts of pressure is on. I feel like I should be living up to that person I said I would be. I feel like we should be having kids. Like I should be traveling. Like I should be more of a worldly person and less of a I-Never-Leave-This-City kind of girl.

I feel like if I haven't accomplished these things, then I've let myself down. I also don't want to turn thirty because then that means I haven't achieved what I set myself out to do.

At least I warned you that this was utterly and insanely ridiculous.