Forever A Kid At Heart

As I come to the realization that this will be my last year of being an official "teenager," I can't help but feel a growing sense of uneasiness that my childhood has officially ended. On Sunday my friends and I were riding the subway and we got into the topic of disney movies. We laughed at quotes some characters said and sang our favorite songs from as many movies as we could think of. Coline and I got really nostalgic and we have been watching disney movie after disney movie just to fill this sudden craving for the innocent plots of the films. As soon as the movie begins I feel I am being swept back into a time when everything was simpler and the actions you chose didn't make such a dramatic influence on your life. I have been having this feeling that everything I do, every move I make, I am actively choosing where my life is going. In my sociology class we learned that the notion of the teenager or adolescent is a fairly new concept. It wasn't until we began living longer, and therefore spending more time in the work force, that we labeled young adults as unfit to live on their own. And even though I know that adulthood begins at the time you hit puberty, I shudder to think about having to had start my life at 13 years old.
Of course there is that other side of me that is craving the day that I start life on my own. I know college is not the real world. I know that I have to be prepared for this giant world that is awaiting me. In my head I know I am an adult who is in charge of my fate, but in my heart, I am still the little girl who is sucking her thumb, completely oblivious to what the future has in store.

...p.s. I feel it is fitting that I got a cold on my birthday week. Reminds me even more of my childhood ;)