Twenty Four

Twenty four. Twenty four feels so unimaginably old...

When I was ten, I remember thinking sixteen would be the age of mature innocence (if this phrase could indicate to you the complete oxymoron that I predicted of teenage adolescence). When I was sixteen, I thought twenty was old. And when I was twenty I thought surely twenty four would be the year I would turn into a "grown up".

But now I'm twenty four. I'm older than so many people in the world and younger than so many more. I still can't think where I'm going to be in ten years or ten years after that.

It's dark and quiet. I watch the neighborhood Christmas lights flicker outside my window. They shimmer and glow in the still silence, faintly illuminating the street below. The branches of the wild cherry tree in the front yard sway gently and cast comforting shadows against the back wall of my room.

You never know where you're going to be. I know this idea has been run into the ground and then some, but the thing is, you never quite believe things until you realize them for yourself. That's when you listen to the cliches as if you were hearing them for the first time - as if you were the first to ever think them, the first to ever feel them. Then that cliche isn't a cliche. It's just yours. Your truth. The truth.

Twenty four. So many have been twenty four before me and still more after. But this twenty four, let this one be mine.


(Inspired by S from 2006 when she was only 22, photo from weheartit)