FOREVER 20

December 7th is always a bittersweet day in my life. The day before my birthday, my final day as my current age. Being a sagittarius, and just being Sofie Mugaas in general... I am sentimental to my core. It´s my greatest strength and my greatest weakness. I make too big of a deal about things and I cry over the intro of The Dawson´s Creek. It´s just who I am. But instead of being embarrassed about it, I embrace it. I love that part of me. And I love that every year on December 7th, I get a little throat thinking about that year of my life being over. The chapther closing.

So here I am just a couple hours til it´s December 8th, 2021 - writing my little "christmas card" about being 20, and the things I did, the places I went, and most importantly, the things I´ve learned. I´ve had so many realizations this last year and I´ve learned a lot because of them. I´ve narrowed it down to the 5 most important realizations I´ve had while being 20 and I´m gonna share them with you and probably make it way longer and more dramatic then it needs to be, and maybe make you cry a little bit because... (say it with me)

ITS JUST WHO I AM.

I did a lot this year. 3 days after I turned 20, I was a contestant in the Norwegian Organization "Miss Norway", I moved to Barcelona and got on a plane to France. I´ve pretty much been going hard ever since. Here I am and still feel like I haven´t been able to take a breath, but that´s how I like things around here.

This brings me to my first lesson. I realized something about myself this year, and it was probably my greatest realization yet. It´s simple, but once I realized it, it seemed like my whole life made sense.

I was put on this earth to have a good time.

It´s honestly that simple. My mom tells me that being my mother was such a daunting task. She says that as a little girl I´d wake up every day and bound into her room and say "what fun things are we going to do today?" every day needed to be a "fun day." I needed activities and I needed laughter!! I needed a good time to survive. 20 years later, I feel that more than ever. I remember being in high school and I´d text my friends and see who wanted to go climb on to the kindergarden roof or go steal apples around the neighbourhood. They would be like "Sofie, it´s a Wednesday night, I have homweork."

And listen, this might not be anything to brag about but I can PROMISE you I have never... and I mean NEVER. Passed up an opportunity for fun, to do HOMEWORK.

And I get that other people have lofty goals, and more important priorities. I get that most everyone else is what they call "responsible" or whatever. But as my baby Drake once said,

"Im here for a good time not a long time."

And it´s true. I´m here to have fun, and to help other people have fun. Those are my priorities. And my 20st year was a testament to that.

20 was skinny dipping in the Balearic Sea. It was partying like Paris Hilton. It was falling in love with a California boy. I dyed my hair black. It was learning spanish. I smoked weed. I moved to Barcelona. It was eating burgers with the homeless man outside McDonald´s at 2 am. I lived with a spanish family. I did zipline. I took a salsa lesson. I took a cooking class. Hell, I even took a painting class. It was chasing after the best view over the sunrise with hostmom. I started my blog. It was dancing outside Camp Nou in the pouring rain with eager soccer fans. I walked catwalk. It was Yokiya, Miki and I sharing our hostel room in France with a 60 year old solo traveler who became a father figure to us after all our philosophical, deep late night talks. I had a photoshoot with the Norwegian supermodel Ann Kristin Støveren herself. I started writing a book. It was being interviewed by the local newspaper with the headline "Sofie Marie (20) can be elected as Norway´s most beautiful." It was Yokiya, Johannes and I becoming best buds with our waitress, talking for ages and taking Tequila shots with him. I saw Mt. Freaking Eiffell Tower with my own eyes!

I think it´s safe to say 20 was a damn. good. time.

But it was also the hardest year of my life by far. And it only feels fair to write about that too.

I´ve dealt with sadness (with anxiety and depression) to some degree for the last couple of years. But lately and around January and August, it really spiraled out of control. I´ve never in my entire life felt such pain and loneliness than I did in those months. I know it was triggered by a lot of things that were piling on me, but it got really scary. And being the "sunshine, good time gal" as everyone calls me heh heh (okay fine its just me) I hate and I mean HAAAATE talking about this to anyone, even my closest friends and family. So opening up about sadness to strangers makes me so uncomfortable because I don´t want people to view me that way. I want you guys to see me as the fun wild girl I portray because that is me! But I realized that when I look back on being 20, I´ll also remember the intense loneliness and heartache I carried for months.

There was a few weeks where I could hardly get out of bed. The simplest tasks like getting up to take a shower would send me into hysterical sobs. It´s humiliating but that was my life for awhile. I definitely dealt with a lot of stuff that I´m not going to talk about online but I didn´t feel like I deserved to be so sad. One night, I sat in my bedroom with my mom, crying and I said to her "I have such a an amazing life, it´s not okay for me to be this sad" I truly felt so guilty. Because I am so blessed. I have the best family I could ever ask for, the most incredible friends and support system, I have everything I could have ever dreamed of and it´s not that it´s not "enough" because it is. It´s more than enough. It´s that I´m still sad despite all of my countless blessings and I hated myself for it.

This brings me to my second realization:

Sadness does not need to be justified.

It took me some time to realize that you don´t need to "qualify" for sadness, depression or anxiety. And when I say that I mean, you dont need to have had a family member or a loved one die in order to be depressed. It´s a mental illness! It´s like falling off of a skateboard and scraping your elbow and being mad at yourself for feeling pain because someone else broke their arm falling off of a skateboard. Their pain might be a little more intense, but you are also feeling pain, and you´re allowed to cry about it.

So realizing that was a game changer for me. And now I´m just in the process of putting on band aids. Lots of bandaids.

For my next lesson/realization, I must give you a back story. If you know me, you know I´m a story teller and this is a good one. To set the scene, it´s October of 2021. I´m at W Hotel in Barcelona, and I´m waiting in the lobby for a man to let me in on the top floor. (My grandma just stopped reading.) Okay it´s not that kind of story.

I was with my friends (Johannes and Yokiya) always looking for a good time, we started working our magic to try and see if we could get to the luxury suit on the top floor with the most amazing view over Barcelona. What? It would be a good story to tell! (It´s very hard to get in because it´s so popular)I´ve heard that´s where Lil Pump the rapper stayed at when he was in Barcelona in 2018. (I had to clarify that he was a rapper in case my grandma started reading again.)

I´ll never forget standing in the lobby telling Yokiya and Johannes "okay, just act like we do this sort of thing all the time. Play it cool. If you act like you know what you´re doing, they´ll believe it."

(Trust me, I know this could have gone badly but like I said, a good story to tell someday.)

The man just looked at us, and pointed us in the direction to the very top floor. And we walked into the swankiest hotel balcony I have EVER seen. There´s music, this insane view over the city and probably 30 people in there drinking, just talking and hanging out.

So we take a seat, feeling good, feeling confident and starts to order drinks. Now, as Im waiting for my drink by the bar I spot this man next to me all covered in a black suit from head to toe with girls all over him. It was the Bitstamp millionaire Nejc Kodric. This might not be very nice of me to say, but you have to realize... Yokiya and I were the best looking girls in there... by a MILE. And do you know how many times I´ve felt like the best looking girl at a party? Once. My brother´s 9th birthday party. And I was the only girl.

I didn´t know who he was at the moment but like I said I was feeling pretty good, feeling confident so I gently push myself against him, introduce myself and nothing. He didn´t even look up from his drink! He just nodded. I quickly realized he was lame and not even worth having a conversation with so we just kind of wandered around the massive Hotel and making fun of ourselves. It was so fun, but the whole night I couldn´t help but laugh to myself thinking "how did we get here??" I mean we didn´t belong here.

At one point, we were sitting on gorgeous balcony overlooking the ocean and we´d been there for some time. The party was going on around me and I just sat there awe of the situation. Not that this was the coolest most incredible thing I had ever done, but for a small town girl from Hønefoss, it was just funny. This kind of stuff doesn´t happen to a girl like me. But then I caught myself.

This kind of stuff does happen to me.

In Bali it was a big festival going on and Aurora and I was in the streets when it happened. It was sick and one of the craziest experience of my entire life. People carried big costumes of different animals and we were in the streets while people were screaming and crying of pure JOY and actual fireworks went off behind us. And of course we joined right there and then at the spot. Just some days later we went to a beach party in Canggu and it was wild! To set the scene for you we danced in the rain under the most clear stars, at the beach, the dj played the most well known songs from the 80´s, 90´s and early 2000 and there were thousands and thousands of people there all HYPING EACH OTHER UP. I tattoed a guy that I had known for 10 min, Aurora danced with a hot Australian and we ended up at 2 Netherland men´s Airbnb that had a pool with 3 other Norwegian girls. Then later, me and one of the other girls almost got beaten up by the 2 Netherland men because we got caught sitting on their scooter when we were planning on borrowing it down to the beach party. Yeah. Not to mention that one time I stayed up all night partying with the Balinese mafia.

My whole life I´ve been trying to scheme my way into crazy situations that will make for a good story. And every time something crazy happen, my first reaction is disbelief. "I can´t believe we did this. We pulled it off!!" And here I was now, standing there next to this famous millionaire on that hotel balcony, in freaking BARCELONA with my best friends and all I could think of was "we don´t belong here."

But that´s when I had the third realization.

I do belong here!

It took me til then to realize that all my life, all these crazy situations I get myself into are because I made them happen. Every time. Luck is always involved, but I manifested and I schemed, I faked it til I made it, and I finally got to sit back and give myself some credit. Who´s to say I don´t belong? I do belong here damnit! Now hand me my Shirley Temple!!

Since then, it´s really helped me especially since moving to Barcelona. It´s given me so much more confidence to tell myself that I do belong. Every person I meet, party I go to, fancy restaurant I pretend to afford, I tell myself I belong. Because I do. And you do too!

Knowing myself and loving that person

Out of all the things I´ve done, and seen, I think my favorite part - and my biggest takeaway from being 20, was what I learned. I learned so much about life, and friendships, and myself really. (I just realized I sound like a camp counselor giving a farewell speech over the fire on the last day of camp)

But seriously! I feel like it took me 20 years to finally KNOW myself. Even the little things like, back when we were in Paris going shopping I was bored as hell in the stores. Because I hate shopping. And it´s funny because looking back, I´ve always hated it. When I was a teenager, most of my friends would go to the shoppingmall after school and I would beg someone to come play a dance game with me at my place instead. But for some reason I feel like it was only this past year where I was finally like "wait, I don´t actually enjoy going from store to store looking, maybe buying something for three hours?" And that´s okay! It´s just me!

It´s been so fun to realize those little things about myself that have been there all along. Like how I have never read the last page of a book. Ever. And I´ve never seen the last episode of Dawson´s Creek. I´ve watched the series countless times but I just can´t bring myself to watch the last episode. If I finish it, that means it´s over and if I don´t finish it, it´s not over. Does that make any sense? Shut up, I know it doesn´t.

I´m such a nostalgic soul and like I said, it´s my greatest strength. But the reason I think it´s my greatest strength, is because being sentimental has taught me to love myself. Like a best friend. And that constantly came from thinking about my younger self. When you have harmful thoughts about yourself, or you catch yourself comparing, or being hard on yourself, to imagine saying them to the younger you. I picture anyone being mean to my little gap toothed sofie and I want to cry! But that´s still me! that little girl. It really is me. I´m just older now. 20 year old me deserves the same love that my future self would treat the 20 year old me with. I hope that made sense.

I think getting to know myself too has helped immensely with self love because I always say you could never hate anyone if you knew their story. If you really knew them and who they were as a person. The same should go for yourself. And there´s things I´ve learned about myself that I absolutely hate! I hate how sensitive I am. I hate that I´m not good at directions. I hate that I´m not good at doing makeup. I hate that I get jealous easily. I hate that I´m bad at opening up to people. I hate that I always arrive late. I hate that I´m bad at replying back to people.

But then there´s other things like, I love that I´m so thoughtful of others. I love that I´m fun to be around. I love that I am smart. I love that I am witty. I love that I am good at asking questions. I love that I don´t put too much value on others opinions of me. I love that I´m good at making others feel comfortable.

Just getting to know those little things about myself, the same way I would with a boyfriend or a bestfriend has changed my life in the most drastic way. I know myself and I love that person despite the things I don´t like, and because of the things I do.

And finally, my last realization.

I´m all grown up!

Do you remember the moment you realized you were all grown up? Mine was a couple of weeks ago. I was in France with my girls, Yokiya braided my hair while we listened to Lauv and Alec Benjamin. I went to look at myself in the mirror. Like - I actually made eye conctact with myself. Isn´t it weird how you can look in the mirror, directly at yourself but rarely make eye contact? I just stood there for a second, looking at my face. My cheeckbones, my random little moles, my round eyes. I just stood there for a moment, looking...and I felt grown up. It was a moment of realization. I didn´t just feel grown up, I fully realized that I was grown up. When did this happen?? When did I become an adult??

There´s something about being a kid, where you genuinely believe you´ll be a kid forever. Do you remember that? I remember sitting in KINDERGARTEN, in my pink princess dress, listening to one of the adults working there talk about "careers." She asked us all what we wanted to be when we grew up, and I could not for the life of me envision myself as an adult. Or a mom. Or a "grown up." That was for other people. I was a kid, and I was always gonna be a kid.

(for the record, I wanted to be a global wildly adored popstar)

You think about your older self a lot though, right? Through the years. And it´s that thought of all of my hopes and dreams I had as a kid that motivates me in the present.

I thought about being 20 alllllll the time. I thought I´d be a mega babe with a tiny dog that would fit into my purse.

So on my last day as a 20 year old, I wonder if 6 year old me would be dissapointed to find out that none of those things ever happened,

But damn. I can´t help but get teary eyed thinking about what I did turn out to be. Being 20, was everything I´ve ever wanted. And it was better than anything I could have daydreamed about in first class in elemantary school.