On June 30th, I turned 19 years old. Naturally, this post, just like everything else I do, is not being done on time.

This is such an awkward age to me. It's this weird year in-between your 18th and 20th birthday that no one really cares about. Like you just became a legal adult woo-hoo you can vote and buy cigarettes, but also you can't (legally) drink yet so really you're only a 1/2 adult. Even the number 19 itself just looks funny to me, so I thought this would be a fair way to pay tribute to my 19 years on this earth...

19 Times When Things in Life Were as Awkward as This Number:

1. Calling my sophomore history teacher "dad"...sorry Coach Chew.

2. Accidentally sending the wrong Microsoft file to my creative writing professor that had a rant about how much I hated people in that class instead of my poem.

3. Using the restroom in the big stall at school and having the door open on me.

4. Exhaling in a completely silent classroom and having it come out as a moan.

5. Sending a guy a flower in middle school (already bad enough) and watching him get it and give it to another girl.

6. Falling off the FlowRider surfboard on a cruise ship and having both my bikini bottoms and top fall off, completely flashing the guy working the ride and several other people.

7. Screenshotting a conversation with someone and accidentally sending it to the person I screenshotted. #snake

8. Middle school in its entirety.

9. The time I mistook a can of beer for a YooHoo and brought it to school.

10. My mom getting back in the car while I was in the middle of rapping an extremely sexually explicit verse at the top of my lungs

11. Changing my shirt in the car without realizing there was a guy in the car parked in front of me.

12. Every time I wasn't wearing shorts under my dress on a windy day.

13. Being fourteen and jumping on the back of a man that was crouched down that I thought was my dad...it wasn't.

14. Accidentally sending a picture of me in a dress to the dad of one of the kids I babysit.

15. Writing an entire essay about space exploration and talking about Lance Armstrong instead of Neil Armstrong.

16. Getting all the way to school and realizing I forgot to put shoes on.

17. Coming out of my bedroom completely naked thinking I was home alone...and wasn't.

18. Talking in my sleep during a dream that I got pregnant in and continuously asking, "Did we have sex?" while sharing the bed with my mom.

19. Tripping over my feet and wiping out on the treadmill at the gym in college.

Growing up and getting old is bittersweet. Some days I just want to be 9 years old again, when my only problems were my annoying big brother and if the monster under the bed was finally going to grab my foot while climbing into bed. Then, some days I just want to be 29 and flipping pancakes on a Sunday morning with my husband and 6 dog children. Life's weird like that. I'm trying to enjoy where I'm at right now. I'm ten tears from 9 and ten years from 29, and this in-between period is my time to just do and worry about me. With all this impending excitement that comes with being on the edge of my twenties, I can't help but feel like I've got to fill my own shoes.

This is my last year as "-teen", and I plan on leaving my teens recklessly and entering my twenties selfishly. (and, just for the record, my idea of reckless is more along the lines of driving to new mexico on a whim and less along the lines of cocaine.) This is the time to explore the world around me and really follow that quest for self-love.

If I have any wishes for my nineteenth trip around the sun, it's for by the time I'm blowing out that 20th candle, I am able to unapologetically love who I am, who I was, and who I am on the verge of becoming.

Peace out, 18. It's been real.