Eighteen

I turned eighteen when the world was cooked by summer, long overdone and burnt, the timer still ticking until the crisp cooling rack of fall would come and color it auburn and mahogany and gold

I turned eighteen when the world was ravaged by spinning waves of rain and cracking tremors, the crust of the earth breaking like bread, giving thanks for what was saved and saying prayers for what was not

I turned eighteen when the most hated man in america was our president and the second most hated was our opposing neighbors, our friends turned foes by eyes that could never see the same sights and liberal versus conservative views that fueled fights, a hatred brewing across a country that has United in its name

I turned eighteen when everything was falling apart just as everything was coming together, the scribbles and scraps of my life stitched together with candy floss, sticky-sweet and easily dissolved

I turned eighteen with a mind of mismatched dreams and a heart of jalapeno seeds, burning with this desire to love and to live and to make the right decision, even when there was no wrong decision and everything felt like the wrong decision but it was going to be alright

I turned eighteen when I sat at a table in the moonlight, surrounded by glowy people who sang love and laughed life, blowing out candles and wishing for everyone to get along

It’s okay to say what you wish for when you don’t get them all out in one blow, when a few still flicker there, burning up this hope that frosting dreams would come true effortlessly. It’s okay to say what you wish for because after a certain number of years, you realize that the only peace every wish for world peace brought was a piece of cake

I turned eighteen as my parents filled my car with gas and I filled out college applications, as adulthood loomed and came and seemed so far away

When I turned eighteen, I did not become an adult.

I became an adult when I turned six and learned to read, when I had this limitless door opened to me that would rush my soul around the world, that would cultivate my heart and overflow my mind and bring me unrelinquishing joy

I became an adult when I turned eight and first felt a quake of anxiety, a heart bending force that would follow me closely, nudging me to achieve, stapling my spine against a yardstick of goals, each notch a little further up

I became an adult when I turned fifteen and realized that busy is nothing more than a state of mind, that communication and scheduling and only six hours of sleep can get you far, that a support system is the most crucial crutch in the world

I became an adult when I turned sixteen, when terrible things happened and they did not kill me, when I got miles away from my comfort zone and it did not kill me, when I got my driver's license and I did not kill me

I became an adult when I turned seventeen, when I found my best friends and found myself, when I found the horrible things in the world and found some beautiful ones, when I found out how instantaneous our lives can be

I became an adult when I turned eighteen, when I had my heartbroken, not by some boy with a quiet mind and hungry hands, but by the steady running out of my heartbeat, my soul tarnishing under the rushing stream of self doubt and defeated tears. I became an adult when I learned that there is always a person who will say that you are not good enough and many more people who will know that you are, that it is up to you who you believe. It is up to you to take your tarnished soul and scrub, scrub until the gold shines through. It is up to you to work and work and work, to know that it may be a very long time before your efforts are rewarded, to know that you may never be rewarded. I became an adult when I understood that the reward sometimes lies where you did not expect it to be, that if you work you will always be exactly where you are supposed to be, even if it is not where you want to be

I needed to turn many more things before I would become an adult. I needed to catch love in my fingertips, to feel it beating against my skin. I needed to work and to own a home and to pay taxes, to do the things I do not yet know how to do. I needed to feel tragedy breathing ice down my shoulder blades, to hold a tiny life in my arms. I did not know if I would turn these things, if I would ever turn an adult, if life would ever graciously gift me with time to try.

I turned eighteen when the world was warm and broken and ready, ready to be explored and held tightly and changed. I turned eighteen and was as close and as far from being an adult as I would ever be. I turned eighteen and knew, deep in my heart, nothing would ever be the same.