Growing up is something everyone has to do: learning to make decisions, growing from your mistakes and eventually, becoming an adult. Since I am 17, I am starting to think about these things. I don’t think I’m anywhere close to being an adult, and I’m most definitely not ready to be, but at 18 I’ll be viewed as one. Some may get stressed and overwhelmed at this idea, some may have no worries at all. Well, I’m right in between. When I was younger, I imagined myself having a picture-perfect life where I made no mistakes. However, the older I get, the more I realize that this vision is not a reality. Everyone makes mistakes, and things don’t always go your way, no matter how much you want them to.

Although, if you think about it, that’s a good thing. It’s good to learn that nothing is perfect, and it’s good to know we all go through the same things as we grow up. That’s what growing up is about, learning, experiencing life and living it with the people you love the most, and I know there’s a lot of people who love me.

If I’m thankful for one thing, it would be the people who got me this far. The people who helped support me through the stress of trying to make a plan of what I’m going to do when I get older. Not only did they help me make the decisions to get to where I am now, but instead of just telling me how to live life, they showed me. They showed me it was okay to make mistakes, it was okay to fail sometimes and it was okay to not have any plans. But my whole life I was told that the only real mistakes are the ones I learn nothing from. It didn’t mean much to me back then, but now I understand that phrase. Honestly, I hope I make even more mistakes. I hope I learn from them, and I hope they prepare me for the real world. So when something happens, I’ll already know how to handle it because I’ve already learned from a similar mistake before and really, that’s all I can do.

Thank you to my dad for allowing me to make many mistakes growing up and for teaching me to learn from those mistakes, because now’s the time to do it. Thank you to all my friends who’ve shown me that they make mistakes too. Thank you to my sister, because I learned from her mistakes so I didn’t make the same ones. Thank you to everyone around me who has set an example for me and for showing me that everything that we do, and everything that happens to us is all just a part of life.