Maybe I got last in translation, maybe I asked for too much.

Time to take a minute and just look this is the life you've created. Take a breath. Be proud just for a minute.

Turning 21 in three weeks terrifies me. I never wanted to grow up. I didn't want the family of my own, nor my own home and all of the responsibilities that came with it all. For most of it I didn't even want to get married. I didn't want to be anyone's just happily myself. I had dreams of travelling the world seeing all of the things that before those moments I had only ever heard of. I wanted a life of adventure and culture. To become a part of something and then leave just as quickly as I started and move on to the next world. My life hasn't turned out so Family Swiss Robinson.

In these 21 years I have made friends some that I shall keep for the rest of these years to come, some who I would happily forget. I have fallen in love with too many celebrities, covered my room in posters dedicated to Jared Leto. I have fallen in love with real people too, some I could regret, but luckily I never regret anything life isn't about that. However its taught me never to be reckless with people's hearts it will only make them reckless with mine, this I have learnt all too well. I have made the most fantastic memories and built the most treasured relationship with my mum, without her I wouldn't be a fraction of the person I am today. I have travelled, abroad and in this very country in a little caravan with my grandparents staring out of the window wondering where we were off to next.

I have made fortresses out of pillows and chair cushions. I have fought dragons and befriended all kind of creatures in the stories I have read, heard and created myself. I have taken many photo's some I still laugh at and some that make me cry. I have acted like an idiot most of these 21 years, in the rare moments I have got my shit together and acted half like the adult I am turning into. 

I have headed certain advice, such as "One day you'll know you deserve better, until then keep being yourself" and ignored other advice such as "Don't dye your hair black the colour will change yours forever" all I have to say to that is "Sorry mum you were right" and "Sorry about the years of wrecking the carpet, and the years to come of me wrecking it some more".

I have tried and succeeded and like everybody tried and failed, for example today my 17 year old brother passed his driving test and is driving his brand new Audi round, I have failed mine three times and my Peugeot 106 is still sat in my yard growing moss and its own plants!! You keep going though. 

I have met people that have inspired me to keep going and others that I have come across who have made me want to lie down and give up. These are the ones I am throwing away just like every letter I have from my bank! I have danced like a fool (that's the only way I know how too) alone and in the company of people that I couldn't ever imagine being without.

I have a best friend who makes my day without even trying, she understands me more than a person could and even the days when I think "Hurry up Em we are four hours late" or "Nevermind then we've missed the film" I love her and her family they really are like another part of my family and I wouldn't change this for the world.

I have a boyfriend who could make the sternest person laugh out loud, he is hilarious. He makes me a better person and I didn't think that could happen from meeting a stranger in an ice cream shop. His family make me realise even further just how he became so amazing. They are as a family everything I would like when creating my own. There is being in love and then there is this. No point in writing any more really as a writer he makes me speechless. 

I have stayed up far too late, rushed to work as if its a new olympic sport and been pretty useless. I have walked out of jobs as easily as I have luckily walked into them and at the age of 21 I am currently on my tenth job. Its hard working the  9-5 when your dreams do not fit into this. I will write, somewhere, one day.

I have put "holes" in my body as everyone tells me, I have an unhealthy addiction to piercings, and am trying to not have any more much to everyone's relief. I have loved and lost, loosing my grandmother is the hardest thing I have ever gone through but through this it has taught me about inner strength and that includes having days when even the smallest of things makes you burst into tears and you still aren't exactly sure as to why. It made me see my mum for the person that she truly is and this only makes me proud to be a part of this amazing woman.

Learning more and more about my mum as I got older has been one of the most amazing things, Doing what she has done single handedly is just mind blowing and I hope I can be just as she has been when I become a mum. Her inner strength yet ability to show such vulnerability bowls me over. Her honesty has been instilled in me as a woman and her knowledge (definitely about hair dying) makes me better everyday. I owe everything that I am and ever will be to my mum.

I look back on these two decades and a sparkly little year and think "Ohmydays" Time really has flown even on the days when it really felt like it couldn't have gone any slower! I am so very lucky to have the people that I do in my life, I would say blessed however in these past 21 years a love of God has never found its way into this heart of mine. I am truly overwhelmed by just what I have and what I have achieved. Life isn't measured by how much money you have in the bank and if it was then mine would certainly look pretty hopeless right now, but how many people you have around you and the memories that become your treasured possessions. I have too many of these and for this I may as well be the richest wannabe writer there ever was. 

I love everyone who has made these 21 years be it good or bad, its been an experience and surely that's what its all about?

Here's to the next 21.