18.

Enjoy this pic of me when I was younger:)

Hello Everyone,

This blog post is very exciting , and that's because I am officially an adult! In all of my other blog posts I've been talking about the time I will turn 18 and now it's finally happening. The past 18 years of my life have been full of memories and I’ll never forget them. Even if I somehow lose my memories, I know that I’ll eventually remember again because the life that I lived was so precious.

Even though I've only been 18 for a few minutes, I've been anticipating this moment in my life for a long time; but at the same time, I'm also sad that I'm growing up so fast. I am currently writing this in my bed after a hockey game and if today's made me realize anything, I realized that time is very short. I spent almost 7 hours at hockey today and even though 7 hours is a really long time, I felt as if my life had flashed before my eyes. One minute it was the start of the JV game and then the next it was the end of the overtime Varsity game. Unfortunately, we lost but I was so happy today to just be there that nothing else really mattered to me.

Usually, when you turn 18 people will have a very big celebration but that's not the case for me. Growing up I've always hated celebrating my birthday because I hated the huge attention and because I was such an awkward person that I didn't know how to react in public situations like that and while every kid around me was expecting huge birthday parties, It was never something I wanted so I didn't really ever want to celebrate my birthday and I never really did. This year was the first time in years that I had done remotely anything to celebrate. I first went to an early birthday dinner with my friends and then hung out with them afterward and then I had hockey the next day and honestly, that was all that I ever asked for and I was so content with how things turned out that I didn't even need a big celebration. I also hate surprises and this was the one thing I could do that didn’t involve any.

As for gifts wise, I've had so many people ask me what I wanted for my birthday and to me, I've always liked very simple things so I asked for letters this year. I've always loved receiving letters and writing them myself and I know that I'll be leaving for college soon and I want to bring these letters with me so I asked everyone to write me a letter. As of now, I haven’t received most of them yet because I’ll probably get them tomorrow but I did get one tonight and I will be reading it after I post this blog post.

I celebrated my birthday early on the 26th at dinner because it was the only time that would work for my friends and I and I even celebrated it a little at hockey. I've received so much love for the past few days and it's so weird to admit that this week has been the best week of my life because I've always hated the month of February because it's always been the longest for me (Even though it’s the shortest) and usually the worst and most eventful month… and not in a good way. But this year things were so different and I don't even want it to end but I know it has to.

It's so weird for me to talk about this because ever since I was young I've always wanted to be 18. I don't know why but at the time I thought that 18 was the ideal age and I just wanted to grow up. Unfortunately, as I got older I realized that time was short and I didn't want to grow up so fast so now if anything, I'm truly afraid of growing up and I don't think it's hit me yet but I know soon I’ll realize it.

Recently in my Psychology class I've learned that when you reach the end stage of your life you start to look back on all of your memories and ask yourself if the life you were living was one you were content with. While I'm not dying and I'm still kind of young myself, I to this day am thinking if I am satisfied with how my first 18 years were… and truthfully the answer is yes.

I've had a lot of very rough moments, ones that I would rather die than experience again but I know that those are the moments that shaped me the way I am, and even though it wasn't ideal, I knew that I needed those certain moments to grow. But my life wasn't all that bad, because on top of that I've had some of the best moments of my entire life and that has made me realize how amazing my life is. In my opinion, I think I live a pretty ideal life and while it's not perfect I wouldn't want it any other way.

Thank you for reading this blog post and cheers to me being an ADULT!!! - Sincerely, TT