I will be 24.  I was 21 when I got married.  I feel like those years have been stolen from me.  The person inside me who is ready to be 24 is the person who is still married, who has a family and a future and security and all of those wonderful things, and so many wonderful plans.  I am not that person anymore.  I can't be that person anymore.  

Before I got married, I was 21, and happy, and full of ideas and dreams and ambitions and potentials.  I can't be that person anymore either; I traded her in when I decided to marry my husband, and any last vestiges of her were killed off for good when he started hitting me.  So I can't be the 21 year old me anymore, I know that.  But I'm still kind of trying to.  I don't know what else to do, since I know I lost the 23 year old me when I ran away from my husband and all of that awfulness.  But now turning 24 really hurts; it reminds me that both of the healthy versions of me are dead.  And now I don't know who I have left to be.  

I'm sorry this has gotten a little existential.  But there's one other reason I am sad about turning 24.  Before my husband started hitting me, we had planned that I would get pregnant at 24, and have a baby.  I know it would have been a mistake to have a child with an abusive man.  I would never have felt that my child was safe.  But all the same... I think about those plans and feel... mournful, I suppose.  I am sad for the family I could have had, and lost.  I am sad for the children we would have had together, who will never exist.  I am sad because it was such a beautiful dream, and losing it hurts more than I know how to deal with.  I don't want to turn 24.