1995-present

Well, goodbye, teenage years.
It was terrifying, but it was beautiful.
I hope I continue learning through other "baby adults" as time passes. Don't ever let me forget this trying and yet rewarding time in life. We grow, we change, we become truer to ourselves, and that's worth dwelling on.
Yes, I believe a "teenaged" time does exist naturally. We only use such a "category" to hold a person back when we view it as a "negative" experience...the emotions and changes of adolescence are not so.
For myself, it was a time when I learned my own sadness, my joys, my values, my religion, my interests. I drew, I wrote, I cried, I dressed funny, I learned new languages. We shouldn't look at this time so negatively, despite its trials. Without it, there would be no time to develop ourselves as adults.
That time is far from over, of course. I am not grown up yet, and I say this every year. But I can tell that time is coming to a close. For once, I feel like I'm older.
When I was born at 1:59am on Friday, November 17th, 1995, only God knew what kind of person I would be now. I have grown and changed so very much since that cold morning! If I were home right now, at this moment, my mom would be relating the story of my birth in a mesmerizing tone of nostalgia which I cannot comprehend, for I don't remember the first few years of my life. Instead, I log her memories as a way to prepare for my possible future children; learning through another's experience. It is only on the night before my birthday that I hear the story to be about ME and MY existence.
How truly crazy it is that I am both alive and have been for a decade.
40 seems so far away, yet when I consider the picture of a baby's face I do not know, dressed in hospital clothes, sitting on my grandmother's mantle, I see that I have actually come quite far since that moment.
It's a time to be celebrated, despite the changes and the unfamiliarity.
I have come so far!
Thanks be to God!