By: JESSICA RHOADES
Staff Writer
Hitting the milestone of the age of eighteen has always been a big deal in young people’s lives. It’s the age that most identify as the age of adulthood. We’ve graduated from high school and left our childhoods behind, waiting for our next adventure. At the age of eighteen, we are told that we are now adults and that we need to decide what we want to do for the rest of our lives. If you’re lucky, that thing will bring you happiness. Though, if you’re like the rest of the world, you’ll grasp onto what you can, to make ends meet. We’re thrown into the real world, expected to adapt to a world in which we are constantly making changes with every step that we take.
At the age of eighteen, we can join the military and fight for our country, but we cannot rent a car. We can buy a lottery ticket, but not alcohol or tobacco-related products. We may get whatever tattoos and piercings we want, we can get married, buy a gun, even. But, we also can be sued, go to prison as adults, and gamble away our money. Some of it may seem fun, but it’s really not our main focus. Some of us have parents who refuse to hold our hand and show us how to be successful adults, tossing us in with the sharks.
I’m about to be eighteen years old, and I’ve just recently gone to the DMV for the first time to have an ID photo taken. It was terrifying. I felt like a lost child, looking around for someone to tell me where to go and what to do. I don’t know how to drive and I’ve never had a job, I don’t know how to do my taxes, or rent a car or a house. These all may seem like very basic things, sixteen-year-olds do these things without a problem, but I never was shown, and am now learning all of these things.
To think, I currently have fourteen weeks of high school left. That is so incredibly terrifying to think about. I don’t have a single idea of what I want to do after this. For the last four years, I’ve just been focused on getting through it, and how to get out. I look back now, on the past thirteen years of my life, and how I’ve gotten here, and I grieve. I grieve for the lost friendships and the easy days of spelling my name correctly and getting an A+ for it. Things were easy, and I took it all for granted.
So now, as I’m standing on that cliff that is my youth and childhood, every year is another push closer to that edge, waiting for the eventual eighteenth push into the valley which is the rest of my life, seeing that there will be continuous ups and downs, and even just plain holes. Knowing it is going to be the biggest challenge I am going to face, knowing that I have to.