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Creative Director @ VFE
February 14th, 2026
<p>February 14th, 2026</p><p>I will be twenty years old on Valentine’s Day.</p><p>People will call it poetic. Romantic. Lucky, even.</p><p>As if love automatically lives in dates that sound soft.</p><p>But I am not celebrating.</p><p>I am mourning.</p><p>There is something terrifying about turning twenty when you still feel seventeen in the places that matter — when your body has learned pain faster than joy, when your heart has memorized disappointment more fluently than hope.</p><p>Growing up was never a dream of mine.</p><p>It was something that happened to me.</p><p>Every year, I lose another version of myself who believed life would be kinder by now. Another girl who thought adulthood meant safety, answers, relief. No one warned me that growing up could feel like being slowly evicted from your own softness.</p><p>They say twenty is young.</p><p>But no one talks about how heavy it feels when you’ve been tired for a long time.</p><p>I don’t fear wrinkles or age or responsibility.</p><p>I fear becoming permanently unfamiliar with joy.</p><p>I fear surviving instead of living.</p><p>I fear waking up one day and realizing I never stopped bracing myself.</p><p>By twenty, you’re supposed to be excited.</p><p>In love with the future.</p><p>Certain of something.</p><p>Instead, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a life I didn’t ask for, holding a heart that has already learned how to shrink itself to fit disappointment.</p><p>February 14th is supposed to be about love.</p><p>But all I can think about is how much of myself I’ve had to give away just to keep going.</p><p>I am not unhappy because I am ungrateful.</p><p>I am unhappy because I am aware.</p><p>Aware of the weight of days.</p><p>Aware of how much healing I carry quietly.</p><p>Aware that growing up doesn’t always mean becoming stronger — sometimes it just means becoming quieter about the pain.</p><p>So if you see me smile on that day, know this:</p><p>It is not celebration.</p><p>It is endurance.</p><p>And if you’ve ever dreaded a birthday not because of age, but because it reminds you how long you’ve been hurting — then you already understand me.</p>
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