The week of my twentieth birthday, I lost the opportunity to interview for my dream internship due to factors outside my control. I accepted that the deep-seated anxiety that arises from interacting with strangers and distant acquaintances would never leave my body. I was visited once again by nightmarish thoughts of ending up alone, loveless, in a job I hate, and exhausted by thirty.

A week earlier, the notion of turning twenty had begun sinking in. Part of me felt hopeful that perhaps this day would finally signal the end of my teenhood, the first part of my conscious life over and to be left behind. 

Evidently, that did not happen. All the same dreams and fears I had at thirteen still haunt me. All my actions are still guided by irregular waves of emotions, and I still can’t speak up in class. For the first time in months, I had three panic attacks in the span of two days, in arguably worse conditions than when I first started having them (I was driving during one).

I’m not sure when or why this immense, uncontrollable sadness emerged in my chest. It’s a difficult feeling to describe, and that might be the most painful part. There are no words. It’s like a hand is ripping your ribcage apart and grabbing at your throat. The only relief your brain can come up with is to end it all. And once it’s over, it feels too silly to even speak about.

Sitting in the car staring at the red light, I was struck by the realization that the one constant in my life has been a desire to be part of something larger than myself, to contribute to things that last. It’s why I enjoy work and volunteering—the chance to participate in projects and events that have a real impact on those who frequent the spaces in question—more than classes and their endless string of inconsequential, soon-forgotten essays. 

It’s also why I constantly attempt to plan my future years in advance. Anything that disrupts the trajectory I’ve built in my mind feels apocalyptic, world-ending.

I say all this to say that the thought I couldn’t let go of at that point was, “I have not changed a bit.” Turning eighteen didn’t feel as monumental as turning twenty, because then I could still brandish the teen part like a shield excusing my sensitivity. But on the morning of my twentieth, when I woke up feeling the exact same, commuted to campus while worrying as before about getting a summer job, and failed several human interactions, I knew that the hopes I could not help but let plague my mind had once again been crushed. I isolated myself when I needed to talk, and I cried sitting down on a cold tiled floor, and I was fifteen all over again.

When do you become an adult? I remember asking my father when I must have been eleven or twelve. 

The truth is that no one ever does—at least not in the sense you believe the word means as a child. Some people never find a home. Some people never settle. Some people, while legally adults, act even more impulsively than children, and there is no one and nothing to stop them. 

Faced with these facts, it would be easy to fall into despair and let the terrifying mystery of the future swallow your heart whole. I know that I do, whenever I hit this kind of low, and it always takes me days if not weeks to get fully out of it.

Two days after my birthday, I had a tough but lovely conversation with a fellow AGO volunteer. She told me how she had experienced her first panic attacks some days earlier, after a rough month marked by a family emergency that momentarily upheaved her routine. She has a beautiful, artistic soul, a love of learning, and a kind heart. She is older. She is happily married. She is as fragile and human as I am, and that felt like a hug to know.

Another truth rings distantly in your ear, when the fog of sadness begins to dissipate: you have changed. You are not the child you were then. There is not one second the clock hits that transforms you into an adult, because time is a construct, and so is age. Underneath all these made-up categories, though, you are born anew every spring, and possibly, every dawn.

Even if it is the smallest change, there are things you do now that you never used to before. There are decisions you make, places you’ve just discovered, people you’ve recently met, hobbies and communities you immerse yourself in. The very essence and beauty of our world lies in its fluidity. 

The reason why my dreams, as much as my anxieties, will never leave me entirely is because they are part of me. They make me who I am. Sometimes, they make me feel like shit. But sometimes, they are also the very reason I am able to accomplish things.

My mother named me Chloe. I never asked her if she knew what it meant when she chose it, but I’ll write it down here because it feels relevant. Etymologically, the name comes from the Ancient Greek Χλόη, meaning “a new green shoot,” “a sprout.” It is also an alternative name for Demeter, the goddess of harvests.

We expect life to be perfectly linear, when in fact, so much of it is cyclical. Seasons fade into one another, years begin and end, a feeling comes and goes and might never fully leave you. Here is to a happy renewal. Here is to a happy spring. And as a dear friend often quotes to me, “O wind if winter comes, can spring be far behind!”