Romans & histoires What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 Book

Maybe I had. Life had a way of taking years from you when you weren’t paying attention. At twenty-two, I felt like I had already lived a lifetime only that it wasn’t the kind of life I had imagined. It wasn’t the picture-perfect life that people dream of when they’re young, when they believe the world is full of endless opportunities and a future that’s always just within reach.

"Tell me now. I want to hear it." She exhaled softly and looked up at the ceiling like she was trying to pull the memory from some hidden place in her mind, and I remained silent as she thought. I didn’t know why the urge to hear about my dad suddenly came over me, but I needed to know. "I was twenty-two," she began, "and I was working at that tiny bookstore on blue avenue. The one with the creaky staircase and the stubborn window that never closed properly. I was always cold in that place, and always rubbing my hands together and complaining about the draft. Every morning I would swear I was going to quit, but I never did."

It doesn't come. What comes instead is something more complicated and, strangely, more freeing: the plain, undeniable memory of choosing. Not manipulated into it, not coerced past the point of recognizing what was happening, not the passive object of someone else's calculated pursuit. A grieving, vulnerable twenty-year-old, yes. But a twenty-year-old who moved toward something she wanted, with her own two feet, on her own initiative, even knowing it was complicated and probably unwise.

She drove away towards the campus as I took a glance at the building. I walked by the highway in the opposite direction. It took me fifteen years to know who I was, how different my life was. At the age of fifteen when I got the knowledge, I was not a human, nor my parents were, I thought that was it. There was nothing left to know. However, all my misconceptions were broken that night. I had so many folds, so many layers in my life, even my birth was something that no one wanted.

“You should have called. I would have come to pick you up from school myself.” Right. The usual chiding. Except I was done being babied in the house. I was no longer the 18 year old girl that had walked away when her father died so she could find a better life. I was 20 now. Still in college and I knew what I wanted. Starting with making peace with my mum. “I'm fine,” I twisted out of her grasp, pulling my bag to the couch, where I dropped it before turning back to her. “I wanted to surprise you.”

I love you all ànd also thank you for the support. would be rounding this book up and starting a new one under it, just a side story though. with different people but would be quite more interesting and sharp the first chapter of my new book Mia POV "Happy birthday to me!" was the first thing I said when I heard my alarm go off next to my bed. Joy flooded my heart as well as my voice. I would turn 20 today and truly become a woman, even though society considers 18 to be the legal age of puberty. My life has already changed significantly since this day.

I looked at her confusedly but didn't say anything; instead, I stood up from my bed and walked to the restroom. "So what did you wish for?" Jackie asked. I shook my head. "What is there to wish for?" I asked as I closed the bathroom door. I took a deep breath and looked in the mirror. In front of me, I saw a person who had been through a lot and struggled. I saw a broken eighteen-year-old girl. I shook my head, smiled, and made my wish: to be happy and content.

My heartbeat accelerates as I read through the rest of the letter. “You do not believe me? Let me tell you a little story. Do you remember when you were nineteen years old and so intent on changing your parent’s situation? You do? That is where it all began. Buckle up because what you’re about to read might change your life forever…”

He didn’t. ‘Then,’ he said, ‘one day I woke up and realized I was twenty-two years old and still doing exactly what I had done when I was eighteen. I hadn’t grown. I hadn’t changed. And I was living from pay-day to pay-day like a kid, only I wasn’t a kid any longer.’

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life, buried in my system. But I don't know what I want to become." I groaned, burying my face in my hands. "I think it's too late for me." He laughed at my plight before carefully removing my hands from my face. "It's never too late, Bee. You can't know what you want to become overnight." "But, I will be twenty-five soon. Twenty-five and jobless. Twenty-five and dreamless. Twenty-five and passionless. I don't know if there is a word like that. But Twenty-five and oblivious don't sound so good."