{"id":11420,"date":"2021-02-17T15:13:37","date_gmt":"2021-02-17T21:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=11420"},"modified":"2021-10-30T14:58:55","modified_gmt":"2021-10-30T19:58:55","slug":"18-coming-on-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2021\/02\/17\/18-coming-on-18\/","title":{"rendered":"18 coming on&#8230;18?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had a birthday recently. <em>Yay, go Aquarius!\u00a0<\/em>People always ask if you feel older, but when I turned 18&#8230;yeah, I kinda do.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The answer had always been no. How can the difference of one day make you feel any older, right? However, something was changing like a couple days before I turned. I felt like everywhere around me was talk about age. No matter where I went, someone had brought up the discussion of age through speaking or just my daily reads. A true trap.<\/p>\n<p>Immediately I just ultimately considered it was a sign from the universe. That theory didn&#8217;t last long though when I had no idea what the universe was trying to tell me. Then, on the eve of February 12th, I went to bed fairly easily and awoke to a new self.<\/p>\n<p>What was it? Well, I did feel a little taller. I believe possibly a new sense of freedom maybe? Possibly a new sense of responsibility thrown in as well? It was like when I turned 18 I felt like I would be held accountable for more things. Even though I still view myself as a child (because I so am) some of society would expect me at a different level.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, I have the social responsibility to vote. That is like an uber-important thing that I&#8217;m ready and scared a little scared for. There are also things I can do on my own now. For example, even though my mom came with me anyway, I got matching tattoos with my brothers without legally needing her permission. She was on board with it from the start, so I never really had to convince her or anything. It&#8217;s just the things like that where theoretically I wouldn&#8217;t have to ask anyone before doing that I don&#8217;t feel I should have been given the power to do. I do not feel like our society should have given me this power already. It&#8217;s this new possible double-edged sword of freedom. All my actions have the potential of much bigger consequences. Also, I don&#8217;t always get to go play at recess anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I feel like my mindset has slightly shifted, and I just hope I never lose my inner child in all the ruckus and fussy fuss of responsibility. Going back to something I mentioned earlier I could have possibly (not really) grown taller, but I think it was more of a feeling like I had grown into myself more. I was unlocking a new section of life kind of like it was a game. This goes for you, too, when I say: I&#8217;ve gotten this far and gotten through every new step from learning to walk to walking into my first day of school, I guess what&#8217;s stopping me or any of us from keeping on? Let&#8217;s go \ud83d\ude42\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had a birthday recently. Yay, go Aquarius!\u00a0People always ask if you feel older, but when I turned 18&#8230;yeah, I kinda do.\u00a0 The answer had always been no. How can the difference of one day make you feel any older, right? However, something was changing like a couple days before I turned. I felt like &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2021\/02\/17\/18-coming-on-18\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;18 coming on&#8230;18?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[171,169,172,140,173,174,170,175,176],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11427,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11420\/revisions\/11427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}