I have been eighteen for twenty minutes (twenty-one by the end of this sentence), and I have no idea what to think about it.

Most would go crazy, jump for joy at having reached that milestone we idolize since childhood. I’m not mindless, however. I know that after this, after I take my exams next week and leave high school indefinitely, there will be no going back. I will never again be six, tormenting my sister while she babysits me. I will never again be thirteen, marveling at my first baby neice. I will never again have the support of age to fall back on, rather the opposite.

I no longer have an excuse, and from here it’s only forward.

I’m scared, for the lack of a better word. In five more years, will I be alone? Will I be boring and normal? Will I have made it through that thing called college? I have no idea.

But that first step out on my own, the same one I took in kindergarten, the same in middle school, the same in every other experience I haven’t wanted to do.

That first step is the worst of it all. And that first step is today.

It is now twelve thirty-one, thirty-two by the end of this sentence.

I am eighteen, and now I have to deal with it.

I should have committed felony while I still had the chance.