A New Nineteen-Year-Old Spends 15 Minutes Writing

It’s been a while since I’ve added anything to this blog, so in honor of my 19th birthday yesterday, I hope you will all enjoy a brief 15-minute free-write about growing up. (As a disclaimer- all of these beliefs are subject to change! I have only turned nineteen!)

Nineteen is not a milestone year. Last year’s birthday was probably the most significant milestone year I’ve lived through so far—the legal transformation from child to adult. An arbitrary one though, brain chemistry doesn’t switch overnight. My brain won’t be fully developed for several more years. For all extensive purposes (except in the eyes of the law) I am still practically a child, and turning nineteen this year doesn’t change that much. 

The finality of nineteen hit me last night though when one of my roommates commented it would be my last year as a teenager. I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve really enjoyed being a teenager, because once you exit the teenage sphere, I’ve noticed people become more disconnected from their childhood. Maybe turning 20 is the real gateway to adulthood. That makes more sense to me. Who knows how I’ll feel next year when I’m twenty. I doubt I’ll feel like an adult then either, but at least it’s farther away than now. 

I’ve always been afraid of losing whatever it is that makes children so magical. If you ask my Early Childhood teacher this quarter, that thing is the spirit. Something existing before the child chooses to be birthed to their family, a connection the child holds to a realm that is outside of our own. Working with young children, I can attest there is definitely a powerful energy surrounding them. Their presence fills up a room, emotions radiate off of them, and they have the inexplicable ability to make you feel lighter than you were when you arrived. 

Growing up, my parents told me I made them believe in magic again. Strolling through the garden beds, with a wooden spoon in my small hands, speaking blessings in a language shared only between the plants and me as a young child. Now, I stroll through the woods, dwarfed by the trees. To the ancient trees, beings of plant matter piled on the plant matter, collecting over centuries, stretching upwards towards the even more ancient sun, to them, I will always be a child. Now, I seek magic in the children I work with, in the art, I craft with my hands, in the green that surrounds me, and in the rain that soaks into my skin. 

Sometimes, when I enter the woods, it feels like my body is trying to purge all the poisons of adult society. The artificial lights, the noises, the smells, the conflicts, the metal and plastic, and finances. I wish I could open my body and dispose of everything unnatural in my system. Free my blood from microplastics. Free my tongue from the taste of chemicals. Free my mind from thoughts of trivial things, the concerns of humans. I feel no loyalty to my country. I feel no loyalty to my government. They do not exist beyond this blip of time. These trees are older than the system that attempts to govern this land. These trees have seen more than any being who walks underneath them. And the sky above has seen all that has been on this rock we bury ourselves into. And above that, celestial beings exist beyond our understanding. There are no cops in space. There is no war among the stars.

Living under these stars, on this rock, this land, living under these trees. All of it is a miracle in itself. Even as I age, I don’t think it’s possible to lose the magic of children. It may be easy to forget it, as adults are prone to do, but one cannot lose the magic of existence. Children are still so fresh on this earth, they have not forgotten the wonder of life. The older we get, the more preoccupied we become with the lights and the noise, and the easier it is to forget how old the trees are, how young we are, and how little our planet is. No matter how old we become, we never stop being the children of the universe.