Turning 18
by
Nathanael Smith


It's about 11:30 on the night before I turn 18... What awaits me as I run into theses brave new worldnesses? I am uncertain of my future, uncertain of what awaits me beyond every bend in the road... But enough of that for now.

I'm sitting on my balcony in a hammock. The wind is whistling all around me, the moon is out as full as a saltshaker. I'm tapping on my keyboard watching the shadows play on the wall of the house... There is a sense of expectation, of waiting... I do not feel in control, but exhilaratingly out of control... I am a little boat tossed on the waves, but able to take them all in stride, for I am riding upon the waves... The scent of freedom lingers in the air, flashing around me in dizzy swirls that chant of my freedom, of my release, of my peace of mind and spirit... I am flying above the dreams of mere mortal man, grappling with the deper mysteries, planning a peace and serenity. That is it: I am serene in the middle of the waving trees, the crashing branches, the whistling leaves. The smell of damp earth and green grass is assailing me with ever renewed vigor... Here are my hands, floating though the air, encompassing the whole. It is on nights like these that men truly live. That the mere tiny heart and soul of a human is revealed in it's infintismal nothingnesses...

Far in the distance, between trees and under the sky I see the town. SOmehow it's become less than a doll's town, more of a smudge of pain on a landscape of abstract joy... But even in pain there is happiness, for there is a meaning to the pain. That meaning is almost the meaning of life, chanted since it's inception... The inception of human suffering is human sin, there is no human sin on a night with no humans. I am merely an observer. I see, I feel, I taste, touch, smell the freedom whistling through me at the rate of a hundred worlds per second. There is nothing else like it.

And behold: I am nobody, for I am a man.

Tomorrow I turn 18. What will occur? Will it be a day of rejoicing, of mourning, will it bring me my dreams or my horrors? Will I look back on it and remember it at all? Will it pass like the morning fog that withers at the every touch of the simple sunbeam? Or will it hold on, stick in my memory as a day, a day that shall live to eternity in my mind, the day that I become a person, for now I must hold up myself as responsible. I cannot fall back, cannot rely on my parents anymore. They love me as a son, for such am I, yet I am also an adult. I can think like they do, talk like they do, act like they do. I no longer need such things as bottles and pacifiers, blankies and teddy bears. I am an adult. I am responsible.

I am scared.