come on eileen.

Nobody could have prepared me for being eighteen.

Nobody could have warned me about being a senior in high school and actually catching senioritis. Nobody could prepared me for all of this change: moving out, moving on, friends going on missions, friends going to different schools.

me.

I couldn't have predicted this. I couldn't have predicted the maturity (or the lack therof) of my mind or the shoes I would fill. I couldn't have predicted the friendships I would create- the ones that would stick and the ones that would crumble. I never imagined the heartache I would feel and the tears I would shed. I never imagined I could ever find so much joy.

As a child, joy is an everyday feeling. But I honestly don't I knew what I was feeling. Going from young peepster to teeny bop to eighteen, pain gets mixed into the bowl of joy, and sometimes not so gently. I think it was then that I began to understand joy. The worst of times helped me see the best of times. I just wish I would have taken into consideration the fact that the best of times won't last forever, despite how much we want them to.

"Some kind of innocence is measured out in years," they say and I actually think I know what they meant by that. And I would choose years of experience over living in innocence forever, but I think that is a given.

And I remember being in elementary and junior high thinking that I would forever hate poetry. Oh, the rhyming nonsense- I just couldn't take it! But here I am: writing. Writing what I would like to call some form of poetry. I remember the first poem I read where I actually cried. Tears of joy, of course.  I remember feeling hungry for more- more words. Please, inspire me, because my hands are ready to take anything you are willing to give.

Times come and go and people will change. I will change. And all I can hope and pray for is that this change will always be for the better.