O... TO BE 18

• Being 17-18 Means . .
  "Where Am I Going and Where Have I Been?"
  


• You personally coin the expression Seize the Day.
  


• At last you are an adult. (Aren't you?)
  


• This is your time to be respected by one and all.
  


• Sex, sex, sex, sex . . . SEX! (SEX!)
  


• You can afford to be a little nostalgic about your childhood, defined as the period of your life that ended roughly yesterday but also seems like a hundred years ago.
  


• You are divided between feelings of total comfort around school and excruciating restlessness.
  


• You suffer a most un-Zenlike burning desire to leave an impression. You want to make yourself a few memories, and you want to be remembered.
  


• Your relationships are even more important, painful, and rewarding.
  


• What happened to your independent, accomplished, strong-willed, clear-eyed parents?! Now they start to be very clingy. (What time are you coming home? Can I look at your application? Why do you need to go out on a weeknight? You wearing socks or not? How come you can't go to a movie with us?)
  


• Is college for me? If so, where? If not, why not? And if not, then what?
  


• If you're college bound, a special bonus reward for you: incalculable first-semester stress in classes and throughout the entire application ordeal.
  


• My classmates are my world! And everything changes come June!
  


• You imagine that adults can be your friends. They're certainly your equals. (Can we stay in touch after graduation?)
  


• Time! There just isn't enough.
  


• Oops. Blip on the screen. Senioritis. (What, me worry?)
  


• Sometimes, in the middle of an afternoon class, you study watermarks on the ceiling and think, Why won't this year ever end?
  


• Oh, no, senior year is over already . . . How did that happen? Where did high school go?


• What did I miss? What didn't I miss?

These are comments found on http://www.familyeducation.com/ and are only a small portion of what you feel on the day that you become an "adult". Today is my little sisters birthday. She is 18 as of today, and soon to be on her way to finding her own life. I remember 18. Unfortunately it was not as happy of a time for me as it is for her. RosaLee is smart, very pretty, and has a good head on her shoulders as to where she is and where she wants to go. She has almost made it. If she can just go these next few months w/ out screwing up, she will be out of our hometown and away from the rapidly declining rural community that we call home. I, on the other hand, spent my senior year wondering how I was going to raise a baby on my own, and pissed off over the full college scholarship I had just flushed down the toilet because I was in "love". These are some of the hard realities that a lot of today's youth face. Where am I going? What will I do?

*I am 29 years old, and I still don't know the answers to these questions. I know that I am a mother and a wife, and I have a CNA license and enjoy taking care of the elderly, but I also know that I would like to become a nurse, but that it is not a financially smart move at this juncture in my life. Maybe when the kids get older. It seems that this is my answer to just about everything that I wanna do, but what I fail to realize is.....that as the kids get older, so do I.