If You Just Stick Around

If you told me even just months ago I’d be spending my 20th birthday skydiving through the air 13,000 feet above Spain, on the back of a gorgeous man’s moto, and wrapped in love so unexpected it feels like a dream I forgot to have, I probably would’ve smiled politely and passed you a therapy brochure.

Because the plan—the original plan—was simple: come home before May 13.
Home meaning California.
Home meaning childhood friends, the boat, the same birthday party since age 11.

Dammit, the original plan was just to go abroad and hope I didn’t find myself severely lonely and panicked about being an ocean away from home.

But as life has a way of doing, she offered me something else. Something too good not to just accept and figure out later.
A chance to stick around—and spend it in Barcelona with people I met just months before.

And on the final stretch of my birthday night, Mr. International driving us back from our all-you-can-eat sushi celebration, Matchbox Twenty's “Parade” starts playing in my helmet:

“And there's so much more that you could see if you just stick around,
And all the street light secrets whispering for you to come back out.”

The line hits.
Because I almost didn’t.

I almost followed the original plan.
Almost missed the magic.

And now, the city streets play memories back to me:

As we cruised through the Barcelona streets, we passed the very same places we drove by the first night we met—
Restaurant Feroz, where we first walked out hand-in-hand with my friends squealing behind us.
The park bench where we met each other’s souls as the sun came up.
The exact road we drove down the night it all began.
The bucket-list moment of hopping onto the back of a beautiful stranger’s moto—check.

Except he isn’t a stranger now.
He’s the home I didn’t plan for.

And I think—how close I came to missing this.
To missing him.
To missing me, the version I became by staying.

Through the helmet mic, I tell him how surreal it is—that we were once strangers.
And under the birthday moon, he replies, without hesitation:

“My life is for you.”

And just like that, I felt something I’ve never quite felt before on a birthday—chosen.
Not for what I give.
But simply, entirely, for being me.

You see, growing up, I thought being a light meant letting people absorb me.
That it was noble to give more than I got.
That droughts were just part of the deal.

But at 18, that drought nearly killed me.
And the only way out—the only way back to life—was in.

I faced myself.
I quit running from the shadow.

And in that dark, I found something unexpected: love.

Not the kind you chase. Not the kind that needs to be earned.
But the kind that lives at the core of everything, patiently waiting for you to return to yourself.

Because to be a being of light and love is not to avoid pain—It is to feel everything you possibly can.

It’s not the opposite of heartbreak, or the cure for anger, or a reward for goodness.
Love is the intersection of all emotions.
It lives where pain and joy meet.
Where loss and hope overlap.
Where courage and fear touch.

So here I am.
Twenty!

Brave enough to celebrate with new people and feel at home.
Brave enough to jump out of a plane—even when I was told my surgery might’ve taken that dream from me.
Brave enough to understand what it means to choose myself.

And in choosing myself, I somehow stayed alive in the minds of the people I love most—by living through love.

So no, this birthday didn’t look like the ones before.
But it’s the one I stuck around for.

The one that showed me no matter where I find myself celebrating, love exists.

Because of my dear friends, family, boyfriend, and the calls, texts, and messages that crossed oceans.

And my god, I’m so glad I got to stick around.