I stand here, before you, at the precipice of adulthood. I’m more accountable for my actions now than ever before. The pressure on me to try and not waste my life has never been quite as great as this. But before I cross over to the other side, I want to tell you that I’m glad you knocked me down 48403 times in these past seven years.

Every time I was too young to say something or feel something, I said it and felt it. And you, Teenage, you regulated just the right kind of cocktail of hormones through me that I needed to keep rebelling. And when I was too old to wish for my mother to feed me, you pierced my soul with an intense silence, an inability to ask for what I needed. And I was left in the middle for too long, it seemed.

But I was not.

Through the endless TV watching and several futile attempts to fix my Math skills, I was growing. And the poems I wrote with the dark, twisted and fancy vocabulary were not beyond my years after all. They were pretentious. They were one of the few things I did as a teenager to try and grow up too soon.

And I guess we all try to grow up fast and stay children at the same time. We become the contradiction we’re expected to be. And the one day, bam, we’re no longer kids or teenagers and there is absolutely no time to sit back and evaluate our feels.

The expiration date of my complaints, regrets, hysterics and confusions has finally arrived. My head is clearer, so is my vision. I’m still trying to figure out where I belong, or better yet, carving my own niche. But I’m not too tortured these days. I guess, my head and heart and body have all become used to being grownups now.

Teenage, my bittersweet companion, I have to say goodbye to you now. I have to travel the world, earn the money for it. I have to leave you behind; I hope you will bury my demons for me. I’ve outgrown them. I have outgrown the paradox; I’m not disarrayed anymore but whole.

Thank you for choking, challenging and building me.

I owe you one.

Fare thee well, Teenage.

"I go to seek a Great Perhaps." - Francois Rabelais