Last week, something momentous happened: I turned 20.

My best friend, whose birthday falls four days after mine, also turned 20. She and I joked about how we have successfully eliminated the danger of teenage pregnancy and laughed about how old we felt.

But underneath my smile, I felt a little terrified.

Twenty. The first digit of my age has changed. I am now closer to 40 than to zero. I am suddenly ashamed of owning copies of Seventeen Magazine and Teen Vogue. I dread turning on the TV and seeing the next generation of television stars who are much younger, fresher and prettier than I am. I shake my head in exasperation when fast cars with music blasting drive past me. And I FIRMLY believe that the driving age should be raised to 18.

It’s not that I suddenly feel old, but it’s that I am suddenly acutely aware of the expectation for me to act my age, to mature into a confident, composed adult. And that expectation is one of the scariest things I can imagine.

To me, adulthood brings to mind a scattering of random ideas and concepts: it means paying taxes and sending thank-you notes; it means not caring what you look like; it means yelling at customer service on the other end of the phone when your order gets messed up or your tickets misplaced.

But when I stop and think about it more, I relax. Especially when I remember my 75-year-old grandmother’s response when I asked her when she felt like an adult. She said, indignantly, “Well. I still don’t!”

I think the thing to do is to spend less time contemplating the process of growing up and more time simply living life. Maybe being an adult means not thinking about what it means to be an adult.

To celebrate our induction into adulthood last week, my best friend and I dressed up in costumes and ran around campus, taking pictures of ourselves and giggling.

I think that no matter what age you are, sometimes letting yourself act like a fool and refusing to be embarrassed can be one of the most self aware and grown-up things you can do.