Graduation & Sailing Away

I'm graduating in December. As of December 14, 2013, I will be the proud owner of a Bachelor's degree, a 3.0 (hopefully higher) GPA and no student loans. (Thankfully, my parents financially helped me through school when my scholarships weren't enough.) This is easily the scariest realization of my entire life. After all, this will be the first time in 17 years that I didn't have some form of school taking place.

But there's also a strange sense of escape, of freedom. I'm not sure why, but I have this desire to get out. I need to go away, go live somewhere else where no one knows my name. I need to cut the ties that I have holding me together and be free. Living with my parents for 21 years (22 in July, happy birthday me!) means that I've always been who they want me to be. I was the golden child, the one who came home before curfew and rarely caused trouble outside of the house. Other than one or two times, I honestly don't remember getting into too much trouble with my parents growing up.

But now, that's all about to change. Not that I'm going to start being a trouble maker, but that I'm the adult now. Once I graduate and move away, my life as "the daughter" will take a back seat to my life as "the adult." I'll decide how often we do the dishes in my apartment, what I'm having for dinner every night, and when laundry gets done. It's frightening, but I'm genuinely excited. I'm in desperate need of this, to be honest. I can't be a child forever. As horrible as it is to admit, my parents won't be around for the rest of my life. So now's the time to discover who I am outside of "The Child." Ready or not, here I come.