I turned 16 on a Sunday, and spent the first five minutes of my birthday sitting on the hotel room couch with my sister, laughing at the dad jokes that were flying around. It was her last parent’s weekend, so my extremely exciting weekend was spent in Norman, Oklahoma. Still, it felt comforting and strange all at once doing this at what is, arguably, the first serious age of my life. I always keep things low-key on my birthday because I really don’t like to celebrate, but this year was pretty close to my ideal birthday (a long walk, celebrating with my sister, and eating dinner late at a near empty restaurant). 

Sixteen somehow seems like a real young-adult age, but reminds me that I am still a child. Age is something that has growingly begun to weigh on me like a towel that eventually needs to be wrung out. Days bleed into months. Months bleed into years, and then it’s my birthday and I’m staring into a blank page of my journal wondering what exactly changed from last year. It feels like all of my friends are joining programs or securing internships and I haven’t yet started preparing for what will be my life. 

On the morning of my birthday I jokingly asked a friend, who had recently turned 16, if he woke up on his birthday and just felt his frontal lobe click into place. In return, he sent me an article which states that your adulthood doesn’t begin until you’re 25. I don’t know why, but it was like I expected to become an adult at the very young age of 16. I haven’t felt any seismic shifts in my cerebral hemisphere yet, but I do think I have been seeing a lot of things differently. It feels like double vision almost, but not quite. For those with prescription glasses, it sort of feels like when you pull your glasses slightly off your nose and things get smaller for a second before you go legally blind (if you’re like me). Some things feel smaller than I thought they were, but other things feel bigger. Everything balances out eventually, or so I hope.

At one point, and I think it’s at this point, which age starts becoming less of a number and more of an invoice on what you’re supposed to have accomplished. Every year, I feel like I should know more about myself, about where I want my life to go; my personhood should feel real and secure and binding. And every year, I realize I’m going the opposite way. I’m unsure about things I thought I was sure about, I want things that I wasn’t sure I wanted, or I come to the conclusion that I’ve subconsciously rejected something I thought was the most important thing in my life at one point.

There are things that I like to think will be magically fixed–one day I’ll wake up and everything will be different. Maybe I put too much emphasis on “big” ages. Ages like 10, 16, 18, 21, 25, and so on, always felt like they should come with closure. The last time I celebrated one of these ages I was finally reaching double digits. That in itself feels like closing a chapter of my life. Somehow driving felt like less of an accomplishment than that. I keep wondering what 16 signifies for me. What chapter of my life am I closing? What’s the reflection, what’s my groundbreaking realization?

I always get hit with intense birthday blues a week before my birthday. As I mentioned before, I don’t really like treating my birthday like some huge celebration, and I have historically just not told people that it was my birthday. I’ve never been someone who has a “birthday week” or god forbid, a “birthday month.” But I do think I make my birthday a big deal in my head because I irrationally catastrophize it in a way, like it’s a big milestone that’s forced on me every year. Yet, every year I realize nothing has happened. None of that transformative character development or school development. I’m just the same as I’ve always been, albeit a bit circumstantially different, and it feels massively disappointing sometimes. 

However (and I’d like to believe this is my frontal lobe development), I’ve been thinking less about success and more about happiness in the past few months. I used to think the two were synonymous, and deep down maybe I still do, but there’s unequivocally a part of happiness that is not quantitative. Adulthood and the process of growing up just seems like accepting and appreciating that life is made up of mostly mundane moments; life roots itself and grows in the gaps and spaces around important life events. In the past 15 years the things that have grounded me are these small pockets of happiness that always don’t seem like much until I’m holding them in retrospect a month later. 

I’ve started wondering if I’ll ever realize I’m happy at that moment. I think that’s what I’d like to change for my sixteenth year. Finding and recognizing true happiness in that moment. Maybe it means living more presently, no longer backseat driving the events of my life. Maybe it means having a list of things that makes me happy coiled in my cells. Maybe it means being a little in love with everything I do. I’m not sure. I’d like to find out.

For this year’s birthday I asked some sixteen-year-olds to write a list of things that make them happy. Here are their answers—reading some of these made my day. 

Lila Aitelli

Sun warming up a cool spring say, chocolate chip pancakes, beach sunsets, handwritten letters, clean spaces, New York review book classics, playlists, Moleskine notebooks, alphabetized lists, history, cherry blossoms, beautiful cinematography, late night calls, independent bookstores crammed with books, a clear starry night sky, astronomy, mangos, people saying that I smell good, walking everywhere, my dogs, animals in general, friends, strawberries, sticks

Evie Blan

Sunsets, sunrises, family, friends, music, random people laughing or smiling in public, people doing random acts of service, animals, little kids being silly, food, petrichor, people watching, dancing for no reason, walking in the rain, poetry, love notes, a really good movie, late night calls in the dark, facetimes, waking up in a good mood and having nothing special to do but feeling productive, road trips, feeling cleansed after a good shower or a good cry

Cate Moulard

Family, friends, music, my dogs, summer, ducks, the beach, food, factimes, dancing, watching movies in the theater, dancing, 2000’s rom coms, baking, cleaning

Trinity Contreras

Music, ducks, petrichor, people watching, flowers, friends, laughing, swimming far out into the ocean, fruit on the beach, food, sweet treats with friends, a really good iced caramel macchiato, walks with my brother and dog, watching my little brothers experience life, facetimes, chocolate chip muffins in the morning

Bella Rugema

Hanging out with my mom (watching tv, shopping, etc.), getting ready for the day, getting ready for something special, traveling, hanging out and chatting with friends, sitting outside on a nice day, walking on a nice day (not too hot or not too cold…just perfect), my cats

Mae McCurdy

Journal, crafts, Pinterest, facetimes with my important people, tanning with friends during summer, late night drives, going to bed, cleaning, sunsets, hanging out at the beach with friends, country music, reading on a rainy day