The Big 18 Is Coming Soon - by Stacy📚🌹

The Big 18 Is Coming SoonBig 18 is coming soon. We're in July. August, September, October, November, December. Five months. Five months, and I'll be at the legal age to drive, and I'll be an adult. At least, I'll be one legally. But why do I feel so unaccomplished? Why do I feel like this 18 is not really a good thing? Why do I have mixed feelings about becoming 18? I mean, at the start of the year, I was excited, in a sense. No, not really. Definitely not about aging, but about the opportunities, responsibilities, and legal milestones that would come with being 18. But each month that a friend of mine turned 18, the joy of actually becoming that age dimmed. Why would I want to lose my youthful vigor? Why would I want to lose that child in me who is very much alive? Being 18 soon is scary. It's telling me that, from 2008 until 2026, I've lived 18 years of my life. It's telling me that my growing body is progressing into adulthood. It's telling me that—joke's on me—my frontal lobe is becoming more developed. It's telling me that I'm an adult. An adult. That's scary. It really is. I feel empty. Three-year-old Stacy wanted to be a chef. She saw a cooking channel and fell so in love with it that she would literally lick the TV screen. That's weird, right? Well, three-year-old Stacy didn't know that, and she never felt embarrassed by it. Five-year-old Stacy wanted to be a nurse. She saw her mom and thought, I could do this. After all, everyone says we look alike. She thought that, just in the blink of an eye, she would become a nurse. Well, ten-year-old Stacy found nursing tragic. She didn't really hate it; rather, the thought of becoming a nurse simply never crossed her mind anymore. She couldn't even remember how the idea had ever come to her. Ten-year-old Stacy dreamed of being an actor and a singer. She wanted to be part of the entertainment industry. Twelve-year-old Stacy found an interest in books. A friend introduced them to her, and she immediately became fascinated. It wasn't that Stacy didn't read before she was 12—she did. But twelve-year-old Stacy saw books as something magical. She had to reread the Harry Potter series. She had to read so much that it became an addiction, an obsession. But twelve-year-old Stacy felt alive because of it. Thirteen-year-old Stacy entered her teenage phase—the transition from being somewhat of a preteen to an actual teen. Thirteen-year-old Stacy was a menace. She basically thought everyone was out to get her and would write poetry about it. Mind you, I still have the notebook filled with those poems, and I tell you, they are as cringe as can ever be and far too embarrassing to show anyone. Fourteen-year-old Stacy was in SS2. She took pride in being the youngest in her class because she felt that, after doing some calculations, she would finish secondary school and university at a very young age. Even though she was smart—but not, I would say, prodigy-level smart—she thought graduating early would make her look smart. And, you know, that counted as being smart. Fifteen-year-old Stacy found herself in a new school with new people, with only her best friend for company. She prided herself on hiding her age and carried herself with a mix of maturity, childishness, and, honestly, hate. She didn't like the environment she was in, and she couldn't bond with the people around her. So she didn't enjoy that period of her life. But slowly—even though she wouldn't like to admit it—changing schools helped in certain ways. She wouldn't say it was the best decision, but she would say it helped. Almost sixteen-year-old Stacy—yes, she hadn't turned 16 yet—was at the same stage of feeling unaccomplished. She was turning what she considered a serious age. She felt like, Oh my God, this is my sweet sixteen. This is the time when people, especially in Europe and elsewhere, start dating. This is the special time. The peak of being a teenager—almost an adult. In some countries, people drive at 16, she thought. So she felt like she was somewhat an adult, even though her mind hadn't fully comprehended it. She was already starting college—in a sense, nursing school—and felt like she looked like an adult. But whenever she looked back at old pictures, she could still see her cute, chubby cheeks. So... yeah. Seventeen-year-old Stacy is right here and now. I'd say she's probably the most confused because, from age one to seventeen, she has picked almost six different careers to pursue when she grows up. And it was that five-year-old dream—the one she rejected at ten—that she's now pursuing. And she's actually starting to love it, though it has its own problems. She's currently trying to make writing a more professional hobby, and she's also trying to see if she can bring back her love for coding and the tech world—the path she once thought she'd pursue in university. Well... look how that turned out. And now she's lost. She feels unaccomplished. She feels like, from age one to seventeen, nothing useful has happened. And now she's turning 18 without feeling special. She's not really excited for the age that's coming because... who actually enjoys aging? Who wants to become an age where she still can't even drive yet? Where she hasn't achieved the list of things she wrote at 12 that she thought she'd accomplish? She's probably not a CEO. She isn't a professional writer. She isn't coding apps like she thought she would. She isn't helping financially in her family. She feels more like a liability than an asset. Basically, she didn't fulfill anything on her list. She still can't completely speak the language she spoke fluently from ages one to nine. Dutch. She still has so many regrets that haven't been resolved. And she's still looking through the rear-view mirror into the past. But then she realizes she's been looking back through the wrong lens. What if she looked back positively instead of negatively? At almost nine, she was able to keep the good memories she made in the country of her birth alive in her mind. At nine, she made two new friends. They both became very close to her—Ebi and Syd. They were the starting point for her in a new country, a new place, and a new life. At 11, she was finally able to navigate life in a government secondary school. She made so many friends, and she was so carefree. At 13, although she was a menace, she was able to understand where her parents were coming from. She finally saw the things they had been hiding from her. She finally understood what she needed to do as the firstborn. At 14, she got baptized and built her relationship with Jehovah. She was also able to take changing schools in stride. She maintained relationships with some of her friends from her old school while building new ones in her new school. She didn't allow hate to consume her, and she kept her carefree spirit and her joy. She still smiles as much as she wants, and she doesn't allow anybody else's darkness to taint her light. From ages one to seventeen, she learned basic programming skills, even if she later left them behind. She learned how to write, even if she sometimes put it aside. She met so many people—from KELIC organizations to spending time with Power Forward, to attending STEM Girls programs by the Visiola Foundation. She was able to have experiences that so many people never had. So why speak only of regret? Why is she still feeling empty about turning 18? People often talk about turning eighteen as though it is a magical finish line—a day when everything suddenly makes sense. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that eighteen means something entirely different. Eighteen is the end of excuses. Not because I will suddenly know everything, but because the world will begin expecting me to take ownership of my choices. That is where adulthood quietly begins. It is permission to become my own person—to stop allowing my childhood to define my adulthood and to decide, for myself, who I want to become. It teaches me that adulthood is not an arrival; it is an apprenticeship. Most eighteen-year-olds still feel lost. They simply become better at hiding it. It means trading certainty for responsibility. I will not always know the right answer. There will not always be someone to tell me what to do. Instead, I will have to make the decisions and live with them. It reminds me that achievement is not measured by age. Some people publish books at sixteen; others discover their life's calling at forty. Eighteen is not a deadline. It is a starting point for me, and I know I can do so much more. Instead of asking, Have I accomplished enough? perhaps I should ask, What can I begin building today? Eighteen also teaches that freedom and consequences arrive together. Independence is beautiful, but it also means accepting responsibility for the outcomes of my actions. Most importantly, it reminds me that growth is often invisible. The person I become at eighteen will not be shaped by one birthday, but by the thousands of small choices I make afterward. So yes, many people count down excitedly to their eighteenth birthday. I am excited too. But I also hope we understand what it truly means. Maybe eighteen was never meant to be a finish line dressed as a birthday. Maybe it is simply the day the world places a blank page into our hands and whispers, "Write the rest yourself."<img alt="" src="/media/inline_insight_image/file_00000000e56c81f48cbd4816dfe6c1b0.png"/>

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