19ANDCRAZY

(written at yesterday at 12 am)

So today is my nineteenth birthday- my last year of being considered a teenager and not an adult. I know I’m still young, but I can’t help but feel somewhat old.

To be honest, for a long time a part of me thought I would be seventeen and in high school forever, but clearly time flies. Each stage of a person’s life, ranging from the moment they were born to the day they die, has some sort of significance. And although each second of life is important, there are definitely certain periods in life that have bigger impacts than others. I truly believe that over the course of life, a person’s youth has the most valuable meaning and affect than any other stage of life.

When a person is young anything is possible. There is no other time in a person’s life when there are excessive amounts of time and opportunity to explore then there is during your teens. And because of this, during the past couple years I have had some of the best and worst times of my present, and future, life.

There are things I have experienced or learned during my teens that will stick with me for the long haul. The biggest, most important things I have learned though, is the importance of finding yourself, and the fact that some of life’s most valuable lessons are learned at the hardest times. Since my early teenage years as a little freshman I have been through hell and back, but that’s okay because not only has it made me a stronger person, but also makes me appreciate things when they go right.

I dealt with the things most teenagers do, you know- love, heartbreak, self-image, finding your place in the world. To me these are some of the best things youth has to offer, because its during these times people really start to learn more about themselves, as well as the real world. And sure often times the heartbreak and self-image aspects of being a teenager can really suck, but like I said, sometimes the best way to learn is to find out for yourself, and sometimes that means learning the hard way.

I have realized that as you grow into your later teens you eventually develop the mind set of being old enough to know better, but too young to care. Like Bruce Springstein sings, these are our “Glory Days”. These are the years we’ll look back on and smile; it is because of our teenage lives that we become the people we do. At no other stage in life will you have as many new experiences then during your youth, and as written in the book Into The Wild, “The core of a man’s spirit comes from new experiences.” Now I’m not going to get into specifics of my first experiences, but I’m sure you can take a guess at what they were. Every new thing, person, and/or place that has entered my life in the past few years has somehow shaped my life and made me see the world from a different angle.

And so even though turning 19 isn’t any sort of milestone like an 18^th or 21^st birthday is, it still has significance to me. For me turning 19 makes me feel like more of an adult, and it scares me as much as it excites me. Never in a million years would I have guessed this is where I would be in life at this age. All of sudden things feel more real then they ever have before, almost like my youth is starting to slip away. I’m finally at that point in my life where although I still may not know everything, I know enough. I have come to learn more about my own self, and also more about others. On one hand it feels good to finally realize who and what is important to me, but on the other hand there lies the fear of losing all of that. But whatever, 19 means I’m still young enough to get away with things, but old enough too; therefore I plan on living my last year as a teenager out in style. OH and always remember, “growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional”. ;)