I’ve finally entered my senior year of high school, and have received all the cool perks of it as well: a driver’s license, a job that pays my own money, and a great class schedule. I’m not as excited as I thought I would be, though, with all these new privileges and responsibilities.
I still remember when I was five years old, watching my older sister and cousins hang out whenever they wanted and eat whatever they wanted. Counting down the days until I would finally be their age, I took for granted the parts of childhood that I can no longer get back. I get to drive my own car, but I will never fall asleep in my booster seat with my dad’s Vietnamese radio as my lullaby. I work and make my own money, but I no longer get to hang out in the back of my parents’ nail salon, inhaling the artificial chemicals and waiting patiently for my cuticles to become beautiful too. AP Statistics and AP Physics may challenge me, but I still remember the first time I added 3 + 4 correctly, and the excitement of it all.
Maturity doesn’t come with time, as some may believe, and it took me almost all nearly seventeen years of my life to truly feel like a young adult. Sometimes, I still feel like that five year old waiting to become older. Even though time around me continues moving and growing up, I’ve often felt stuck in one place, unchanging. Maturing, though, came when I realized we never truly stay the same, even day to day.
The fact we are alive as human beings, experiencing no day the same, is the testimony to the fact that I’m always changing. Even as a toddler, my favorite foods and shows would change from soy sauce to rice krispies or Winx Club to Octonauts within just hours. Today, I continue to be the revising person I was when I was a young kid.
It happens when I’m on the marching band field, answering different freshman’s eager questions on how to read drill or backwards march. Sometimes, it appears in Mock Trial, as I explain the intricacies of hearsay once again. Other times, it’s at home, with my little siblings, when I let them blow out my birthday candles with me because they just enjoy it.
Part of me is undeniably still the five year old girl who loved pretty pink dresses, but I am now also a girl about to turn seventeen and is so eager to embark on what the world has in store for her. Plus, who said My Little Pony was only for kids?
