When I Turned 25, Nothing Happened — And It’s Freaking Me Out

We spend 364 days looking forward to turning another year older. On our 15^th birthday, we count down the minutes until we turn 16 and practically run to the DMV in search of our permit.
On our 18^th birthday, we stare in the mirror in shock: “We’re getting so old!” we say, giggling with our best friends right before sneaking out of mom and dad’s house.
When we turn 21, we barely remember a thing, leaning on tequila shots and eye-closed photos from the bar to piece together the blurry moments that took up most of the night.
On the eve of my 25^th birthday, which fell smack in the middle of an exhausting workweek, I wondered what I’d feel like the next morning.
Would my hair feel instantly less voluminous; my skin much drier, would my boobs sag, would I hate the five crop tops I’d bought the day before? Or would I feel revived and alive, ready to take on the next quarter century of my life?
We put so much stock in birthdays that the fear of nothing happening is greater than the pleasure that something might happen. Sipping champagne in the thick of a Netflix binge, I felt happy and calm. Was this 25?
When I woke up the next morning, I felt nothing. Dread, maybe, because who enjoys getting up at 7 am during the winter to go to work on a Thursday? But, beyond that, I felt the same as I had the day before and the day before.
Wasn’t 25 supposed to bring along with it a slew of questions? I was over the Millennial Hill. I was supposed to have learned something, to garner some great knowledge in my first quarter, wasn’t I? And if I hadn’t done that, shouldn’t I have felt like sh*t for not learning anything?
Here I was, entering a whole new age bracket and yet I was still the same old me. Throughout the day, I binged on cookies, cake, chocolate-covered strawberries my boyfriend had delivered to my office and an oversized and amazing sushi and Saki-filled dinner with my girls.
And on what should have been my own Happiest Day of The Year, where everything was designed, and everyone gathered, to celebrate me, I felt nothing, save for the twinge of guilt every time people asked me, “Aren’t you so excited to be 25?” and I lied and told them I was.
I couldn’t even get drunk enough to blink the birthday burden away. It was waiting for me every time there was a lull in conversation, every time I asked the bartender to pour me another round.
Was there something wrong with me? Had I not achieved enough? Seen enough? Not challenged and tested myself enough? Or had I felt and seen and saw too much that I was already changed? Had I amped it up so much in my mind that I was worrying about experiencing nothing than letting myself experience anything? Turning 25 felt like it should be different, though. But was it?
No one congratulates you when you turn 17 and no one’s bending over backwards to make your 24^th birthday an event to remember. Turning 25 is not like turning 16 or 18 or 21.
There’s no reward for making it to a quarter century; no badge you earn that you can wear proudly. I felt the same as I crossed the proverbial bridge from 24 to 25.
There were no new moves to learn, like how to drive a car and how to vote on a confusing as hell ballot or how to order a shot without looking like a newbie. The dance was the same. The same song had been playing for 25 years.
As 25 settled on me, I realized I did feel nothing. And that was fine. I was fine. I turned the page on a refreshed me, not a new me, not an old me. It was then that I realized that was the difference.