Time. It’s how when we’re 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 we think that there is all the time in the world to waste our lives away before a career and future come knocking at our door. All that time that was supposed to last forever suddenly vanishes and it's time to grow up. Time to find a college, time to pick a major, time to clean up that resume. A time when you can no longer pretend that you’re a little kid, and a time when you finally feel the need to be older, healthier, and more mature. Before you could have ice cream and popcorn everyday without feeling guilty, but now you worry about how it will affect you in five years. Every minute of every day has to be planned out, and the to do list gets longer and longer. Responsibility is put on your shoulders for various things that you never asked to be responsible for…such as yourself. The fun and games of 14 seem years gone by at 15. Psats and SATS loom near in the future, and it seems that if you fail that one day, you will fail everything and all your dreams will be forever unreachable. You come to the point where you no longer are positive that you want to stay close to home forever…that you might actually want to see some of the world. You have frequent moments in the day where you think “remember when I used to do that, or say this?” and “remember when I wished I could do this? Well…here I am...and I wish I was still wishing for it.” You wish that even though she says you still can, that you could sit more comfortably in your mommy’s lap and just cry even though there’s nothing to cry about, but no…that would be a dramatic teenager thing to do...and one must never stoop to that. When reading 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade journals you wish that you still spelled peanut butter “pnt bttr” and that a day was still as simple as “Today mommy, daddy, Lizzy, mark, and Jennifer got hair cuts. I got a new sweater for my birthday. It’s SO pretty and I get to wear it to my piano lesson!” The days when all that mattered was planning the recital or “restaurant” for the next time one of your cousins came seem to have slipped away. You no longer have the belief that you will never leave mommy and daddy, and now all you can think about is going to college and getting married. Life is all about plans now; college plans, wedding plans, having kids plans. You have a deeper understanding of what heartbreak and sadness is, and also joy and happiness. You’ve learned lessons the hard way, and have actually started to learn that what your parents say is best…is most usually the best. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Those years are gone. Whoever said that 18 is the year you are an adult was crazy, 15 is when the all the years before seem to have disappeared…not 16, 17, or 18. New dreams have replaced the old, and new goals are set. Time. It is the unspoken alarm bell that wakes all of us up from the dream we’ve been living. Time. Time to move on; time to live a new dream.
-Funny how you think of stuff like that in the middle of the night. Its interesting to think of how somewhere there is a little blond haired green eyed girl who just like I did, can’t WAIT to be 15. Or even 10. She’ll wear pink dresses, have tea parties, go out to ice cream with daddy, and sit on mommy’s lap, never realizing that these days are going to go by so fast. She’ll turn ten and she won’t even care, she’ll just be anticipating 11, 12, and 13.
P.S just so everyone knows...i never feel guilty about eating popcorn and ice cream :) i did for about an hour.
<3
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