By Mirren Bodanis

Editor-in-Chief

It is time that I partake in a true Plant Editor-in-Chief rite of passage: Writing about the existential dread of turning 20. Forgive me for taking this time to indulge in the first person.

I think I’m scared? I can’t tell. The truth is that the pressure and exhaustion of my final semester is such a river of anxiety and high-stakes senioritis that once my birthday rolls around, I don’t know if I’ll have enough in me to ever tell how I feel. Turning 20 is like… what the fuck. The first season of my life is over. Gone. No more childhood, no more teenage years, that’s it: it’s adult time. I have to work and dress and clean and create and if I take one wrong step it’s prison for life!

My birthday is November 11th; Remembrance day, which has always been extremely strange. Remembrance ceremonies were a big deal at my primary and secondary school, filled with mandatory poppy-wearing, bagpipe players, In Flanders Fields and the Moment of Silence. In 9th grade I was elected to read McCrae’s poem over the intercom for the whole school, which was weird because it made me feel special on my birthday when the whole purpose of such a literary sermon is to turn your focus away from yourself, and towards Those Who Served. Self-sacrifice, honour, and determination: the virtues of Armistice, which sit hard opposed to self-indulgence, carefreeness, and relaxation: the virtues of Birthday. As I’ve grown up into someone who has become deeply critical of the military, war, and any reason to fight for our Home On Native Land has only made the 11th even more confusing, which sucks because it doesn’t feel like I should be confused anymore after completing my Second Decade. And this year, not only is it my 20th, but also my graduating semester, and every day the stress and crunch levels increase as I mentally bleed, sweat, and cry trying to graduate Cin|Com with a film that’ll get me into uni. In fact, it looks like the only day I’ll be able to undertake the extremely nail biting shoot of said film is my birthday weekend.

Growing up into the big world makes me feel small. Turning 20 makes me feel special, but school makes me feel like a worker bee. My birthday is a day to focus on me but the 11th is for selflessly commemorating the sacrifice of others.

Perhaps, the conflict lies in my thinking. Growing up, everyone talks about “your 20s” and “your teens.” Certain things are supposed to be certain ways, and every moment will fall into some neat equation whose sum is clear by 40. Guess that’s not the case!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

It’s a hard time for the Scorpios out there.

The sun comes less, and the cold with it is painful, but also makes more accessible its rising and setting. The leaves and sky red and orange, a twice-daily blaze of destruction as our city bares its flesh before donning its white coat. Have you ever really covered yourself in snow? It’s warm. That’s how you know it’s a hug made of frozen tears of laughter, not sorrow. For as fall brings on decomposition, in the winter comes creation: we’re all huddled together with only our minds and others minds, and things will come of it.

As the midterms come, and your nerves tighten, and in your heart is stress and in the streets is cold, open yourself. Let the pressure squeeze out your soul, its colours filling your perception in a euphoria of creation. A painful process. A beautiful process.

I miss being small. I miss my first semester, when everything was welcoming to me. I miss not caring if I had good grades. Simone, I miss reading your birthday words that twinned these and only being able to sympathise. I miss milk and honey and nap time after lunch time. But there are things now that I will miss and things then that I do not, missing is change and change is exciting. Exciting is scary. Exciting is good.

For my fellow Scorpios, and all the other stars in the sky: our Birthdays are not one thing or another, but a pull between many. Thus is made the rip through which the world brings beauty into our souls. And although the cold air makes our skin brittle, with stunning fire the sun sets early so we may sleep more, and heal, in the morning making the world beautiful.

I hope.

I love you.