As of 2 days ago, I'm no longer a teenage girl and it’s something I can hardly wrap my head around. I’ve always been the type of person to get sad with the changing seasons and feel a sense of loss with every birthday of mine that comes and goes- even despite how much I love both celebration & change.
19 was the greatest year of my life- and not in a surface level or superficial way… I say that in the deepest and truest sense that exists. 19 taught me and grew me and stretched me and hugged me so tight all at the same time.
I got to spend the year travelling back and forth to every corner of Florida, New York, and South Carolina. I got to live in Costa Rica for a month. I dyed my eyebrows pink and threw parties on front porches. I swam through aquamarine springs and climbed up mountains and bought the van I’ve dreamed about since I was 13. I watched my friends accomplish things we’ve talked about our whole lives and felt an abundance of love and support when I did the same. I saw Taylor Swift perform the most magical concert I’ve ever experienced. I grew deeper in my faith & surrendered things I never thought I’d be able to. I quit my job then got a new one. I watched my two best friends get engaged to begin the rest of their lives together. I planted new mailboxes and saw growth with “Love Letters” that I could’ve never imagined. I got my first feature in the news… then another… then another… then another. I made new friends & grew with the old. I’ve never known love the way that I got to experience it during my 19th year of life.
And I’ve never known loss the way I got to experience it in my 19th year either. While age 19 was a celebration of life, it feels so wrong to write anything about how beautiful it was without also mentioning the all-consuming hurt that at times, sat right alongside it. I unexpectedly lost both family and friends over the course of the past year. Until now, death was only ever a far-off thought to me- something that happened, but not to people I knew. This year taught me that I’m not invincible and neither are those that I love. I experienced grief in a way that pushed me to love harder and louder, and was reminded of the comfort that is knowing that we will be reunited again someday.
I feel like I’ve lived so many lives in the 7 years I spent as a teenage girl. Looking back on who I used to be blows my mind. 15, 16, 17, or even 18-year-old Daynie are all completely different people to me- to the extent that sometimes I can’t even recognize younger versions of myself in photos.
My teenage self brought me through heartbreak and love and death and life. My teenage self is the one who met the friends who I’ll grow old with. My teenage self is the one who dreamed up all the things I hope to spend my life accomplishing. My teenage self is the one who experienced hurt so that my future self could learn. My teenage self is the one who had to make hard decisions with the older version of myself in mind. I’ll always have a rocky relationship with the way I view the younger me, but changing my perspective to acknowledge that my teenage me paved the path for my life in nearly every sense, helps me to have a little more softness for who I used to be.
I’m going into my 20th year of life as a seasoned traveler, as someone who understands and knows the love of Jesus, as a creative, a barista, and as someone who both my younger and current self would be proud of. I'm excited to see what 20 holds.