Then And Now A Ten Year Look

Then and Now a Ten Year Look

My observation of people around me has shown two types of people when it comes to birthdays and getting older. The first type is the people that don't care. They are the ones that celebrate or don't celebrate every year no matter what the number of candles on the cake. The second type is the ones that dread every day of the 365 days leading to there next birthday. Every year is another reminder that they are getting older, life is uncontrollable, and nothing they do can stop the aging process. I am a part of the second group of people.

This year I turned twenty five! To most it may not seem old, but to a fifteen year old I am ancient. When I was fifteen I remember my oldest sister was turning twenty five and married living in a house trying to start a family. I never thought at fifteen that I would ever be twenty five. I always figured that somehow it would miss me. I would magically stay a teenager forever. But every year another birthday would come and go and soon I was dreading every year the next fateful November day when I would have to acknowledge my inability to stay a teenager. Now I am having to acknowledge the fact that soon I will face my thirty's and twenty five will seem like a childhood memory.

When I was fifteen I lived in a small town in Colorado with my parents, I didn't work, was a sophomore in high school, and in love with my best friend David. Even though I look on it now with warm feelings really analyzing it makes me realize that I was a mess at fifteen. Awkward in my own body I struggled to fit in. I wore contacts since I thought wearing glasses would type cast me as a nerd. I cussed so that my peers would find me cool. To shock people one day I cut off my hair which was waist length to look like Darma from a popular show. Now at twenty five I display some of the same traits; my stubbornness, my giving nature, my sense of humor. Something