I turned nineteen a few days ago...

I turned nineteen a few days ago. It's the first birthday in a long time that I have spent feeling happy and not cried or some such thing. As evidenced by other posts on this blog, in the past few years I have gotten into a cycle of having a miniature midlife crisis before my birthday, but for some reason this year I have just developed a post-birthday shut down.
It could just be my seasonal depression coming back, but I can't help but feel like the proximity to my birthday has something to do with it.
It hit me today that so much has changed about me since I began the journey of this year of life. Normally, on my birthday, I spend some amount of time thinking back to the many years previous, but today I contemplated this past year in particular.
I distinctly remember desperately and yet reluctantly wanting to be eighteen. Publicly I told my friends and family that I was very excited to be eighteen, but I don't remember if I actually was. To add to that, I do not remember at all how my actual birthday went last year. It's a fuzzy blur of many birthdays past, so I hope I will be forgiven for forgetting everything except for the birthday wishes I received on Facebook.
But yes, anyway, I wanted to be eighteen, despite what extra responsibilities could be and inevitably would be attached to that age, since I would be a legal adult in the United States, and that was a big deal for me.
I believe I was seeking the approval of others, or some kind of acceptance. I'm not even sure about my motivations now that it's been a year.
At any rate, I should have known that turning eighteen was a whole package. The past year of my life, looking back, has been one of the most emotionally draining I have ever experienced.
I became so incredibly depressed during that winter and I still slip into bouts of depression today. Friends I considered "not on such good terms" back then do not even speak to me now, as expected. Yet, between two people who once flirted with the idea of love, only terse words, thinly glossed with the ambiguity of internet communication, are exchanged, and yes, it makes no sense why. I traveled to Korea again, an experience that was both exhilarating and challenging, as many relationships changed and evolved while I was there and gone from home. So many of my perspectives were questioned during that trip; concepts such as age differences, affections, love, independence, intelligence, tolerance, and race were all thrown at me from so many angles. Now that I'm at U.Va, I continue to be brought to ponder my stance on these things, and it can be difficult to understand what my answers are, or how they might change with the next experience (don't worry, I still plan on being a conservative when I graduate, guys ;)). When I arrived home, my parents went on a trip to Europe, and I was to take care of my younger siblings. I received a lot of help, but realizing that it was harder than anticipated and I was totally incapable of looking after them on my own made me question my earlier assumptions about readiness for certain things in life.
Not the way to start your first semester of university. Not the way to deal with a relationship crumbling before your eyes for no apparent reason. Not the way to end the third quarter of your first "step" of adulthood.
In the end, I survived the last leg of eighteen, though I went through many phases of indecision, fear, and excitement to get to where I am now. I can only hope this year will be less demanding of my emotional energies, but I don't really know. In the past two days of being nineteen, I've felt the roller coaster ride still rumbling on in the back of my mind, completely immune to my deep desire for some consistency in my emotional state.
Hence, I'm trying to stay off of Facebook. I have four assignments due before Thanksgiving Break, and that's a lot. The negativity on social networks is overwhelming and the amount of time wasted through such networks is mind-blowing.
So, in order to NOT feel like I am forever alone without a boyfriend (because you guys never know how much you want one until you've almost had one and he's gone, trust me), the world is going to smithereens (because Facebook trending and my dad practically tell me the same thing when I get online-feminists are crazy, more people are dying in mass genocides, and no one knows how to properly spend their invisible money), and that media is the only answer (because DramaFever's page pops up in my feed and tells me that YES, the face of that Korean beauty is the DEFINITE ANSWER to my next homework question! Wait, what?) I am staying off of Facebook.

Enjoy your next birthday, everyone. Don't be like me and get depressed, and then dump all of your problems on the few readers of your blog.
Off to get that Linguistics degree,
-Argentia Krystofel