I thought eighteen would change me.
That I’d wake up on the morning of my birthday and my skin would glow with some untouchable softness, that I’d carry myself with a kind of wild, effortless confidence. That I’d know what to say to boys and what to do with the heartbreak. That I’d suddenly be in charge of my own life.
Instead, I cried in the bathroom because I still didn’t know how to make my eyeliner even, and I felt awkward in my own body in a way that made every mirror feel like a trick. Eighteen felt like a glass I couldn’t break through – all that grown-up-ness just on the other side, so close, but I was still fumbling with the latch.
But eighteen just made everything louder. My thoughts, my fears, my need to be chosen – by universities, by friends, by anyone. I spent so much time trying to make my life look perfect from the outside that I barely recognised it from the inside. So tired, all the time, from carrying around this pressure to be impressive and happy and cool and easy to love.
I thought that would be the age I felt free.
But freedom arrived with grief in its hands.
My dad died two months before my nineteenth birthday. No warning. Just a phone call. Just the end of the world.
And everything I thought I’d feel at that age – confident, collected, whole – vanished into this enormous ache that no one prepared me for. I thought eighteen would mean independence, but instead it meant trying to figure out how to breathe again in a house that suddenly had too much quiet. Too many jackets that won’t be worn again. Too many moments that split time into before and after.
I didn’t think I’d be learning what it meant to grieve and grow up – at the same time, with the same hands.
I spent more time trying to prove I was fine than actually being fine. Stretched between who I used to be and who I was supposed to be. Like a room that hasn’t decided what kind of light it wants yet – morning? dusk? Both? Neither?
Eighteen felt like a contradiction.
Like I was supposed to be becoming someone new, but half of me was stuck in a memory I couldn’t hold onto long enough. Some mornings I’d feel older than I ever thought I’d be. Some mornings I’d just want to crawl back into bed and pretend I’m twelve again, before things hurt like this.
There’s a kind of loneliness that comes with losing a parent at that age. Everyone around you is talking about summer formals and dreams, and you’re quietly wondering if grief ever stops scraping your insides. People don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. And you learn how to smile through it all.
But there was also a strange kind of softness I found inside myself. A quiet bravery. I still cry in the car. I still don’t know how to make my own doctor’s appointments without hearing his voice in my head, reminding me what to ask. But I’m here. And I’m learning.
It’s strange – how you grow older expecting to step into these polished versions of yourself. But instead, the changes come like a slow drip. Not a thunderstorm. Not a spark. Just a quiet kind of unfolding.
I thought at eighteen I’d be someone else.
Someone better. Someone who knows. Maybe it’s not about knowing. Maybe it’s about starting to listen.
To the parts of me I used to ignore. The soft, scared bits. The dreams I buried under grades and likes and group chats. The girl who still doesn’t have it figured out, but is starting to be okay with not having to.
Eighteen didn’t feel like how I imagined.
It felt like loss, and small joys, and trying again. It felt like my childhood ending in ways I never expected. And somehow, still, it felt like becoming.
A slow becoming. A whispered kind.
And maybe, that was enough.
Luci.News 
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