17 and more

Officially the last year of being a kid and officially the last 365 days of running away by saying 'I am just a kid.'

Honestly, 17 feels tall enough and quite mature enough as an adult but legally not being one. It feels like a grown person with more duties than kids but still in the childhood phase. It is the age when we get 'the actual world responsibilities,' more than just typical curriculums and activities. It is more of balancing, absorbing, and accepting the total grown-up person changes in you and letting them sink in before you are an 18-year-old adult. It is more of a mid-age when you are legally still a teenager but in the between stage of an adult and a kid.

Now, I don't know about everyone. But, to most (including me), it feels like a more reasonable age to accept the fact that you can't just mess around anymore as much as you used to. But still, keep that child inside you from vanishing away. 17 to me is something too soon, something that's making me oddly reevaluate everything and take up things more seriously. It makes me excited, but at the same time, I can't figure out why the thought that 'things have changed' keeps on hitting me at midnight. Cliché as it may sound but, it keeps on giving me a FOMO and an anxious soul who wants to be a kid. Maybe, that's not me, that's the age and all the responsibilities with it telling me to think it over and over again. Maybe, 16 showed some lovely colors of itself, which are making me give high expectations to be fulfilled by 17. Maybe, 17 might not just be that difficult. Maybe, it's just what I am thinking but in reality, it will give me what I want for myself. Maybe 17 will correctly emphasize its real self. Lots of 'maybe' and more of 'my anxious self.'

But, till then I want to thank the 16-year-old self who gave me what I wanted and what I deserved. Sixteen would always and forever be printed in my mind because it was a beautiful age to live and also to survive at some point. I want 17 to correctly justify itself. I want it to show its beautiful colors and maybe then live up to the last year of being a kid before all the grown-up legal adult feelings, responsibilities, and behavior strike in a year.

Cheers to turning 17!