Cheery and worry free

I had parents to do everything for me.

Prancing around like a newborn foal,

Enjoying all that made up my perfect little world

I never would have thought that it would come to an end

No notion of an expiration date.

 

Minimal stress from school and lots of spare time

Just about the only worry on my mind:

how I would manage to clear my plate of any and all food.

No knowledge of it soon coming to an end, I continued to

well, age.

 

I’m eleven now, double digits, impressive right?

Well not so much, as it turns out I am not math savvy

But at least I am in honors courses, no?

Lots of questions, I am aware

That’s what i did to try and understand the material

Until I didn’t.

 

My name is announced

I begin to walk up the three steps before me,

shake hands with my principal, and recieve my honors grad

promotion medal and diploma.

No longer a child, I am a teen.

But I feel no different as I step down those steps and return to my seat.

 

It’s because I am no different, the medal or paper changes nothing

Only the fact that I’ve been upgraded to a new school where I have to

start over.

New school means new friends, new opportunities, but also new and

frightening experiences.

 

Fourteen, has that much time really passed?

Freshman, it was the same as fresh new targets for just about anything

This year was spent attempting to make friends and get superb grades.

With the promise of getting into honors if I got a 4.0 GPA the first semester

I worked hard, but to no avail.

Counselors aren’t so great at their job I suppose.

Promised and let down, my grades saw a drop and my social life further struggled.

 

Fast forward two years and I’m a junior, an upperclassmen.

A new way of thinking took root inside of me

Nothing was more desirable to me than an irie transcript.

Except friends maybe, but still, not so much as the latter.

And as fast as it came, it went

I’d spent so much time caught up in my studies I hadn’t realized how

much I’d kept away from friends and family, quite literally pushed them away.

 

Summer was not looking to bright, ironically

Social life was just as dull if not duller

Society? It kept going without me

But my grades were great. So who cares?

I started not to, not as much anyways

High school was said to be a grand experience

And I did not agree.

 

So focused on my studies, I took a turn for the better my senior year

Maintaining my grades became slightly easier and I made time for friends

However, only for my true friends whom I soon realized was not all of them

Many friends were lost along the way, but none for the worse

Each one taught me something and I could not have learned that sitting

in a classroom.

Seventeen, a dancing queen if you will

That’s how I felt.

 

It was a memorable year.

Diploma in hand,

my boyfriend’s in the other,

satisfaction in the air,

fulfillment in my heart,

and above all, pride in my parent’s eyes

There’s nothing else I could have asked for.

Except a car maybe.

 

I was about to start a brand new chapter in my life,

apart from my family and friends,

eighteen hours away and only months away from being an adult,

I felt ready and excited to begin on the path I’d created for myself.

 

Not a single experience, but many, shaped who I am today.

Because of the people I met and lost along the way, I got

stronger and learned to manage—to prosper.

I learned more from experience than I ever could listening to a teacher,

I lived more than I could have ever if I was guided the entire time.

No longer a child, but an adult,

it lingers in my mind when that metamorphosis occurred, but the truth is,

It didn’t happen overnight and no one will truly know.

 

Growing up is melancholic, yet cathartic.