So I was thinking.
About my long post yesterday. About CJ and Becca.

Last night, I had a great conversation revolving around age, and life and choices.

I'm turning 25 in june. Nearly every one of the people I know was forced to grow up WAY too fast. We went from being little kids, to shouldering adulthood without taking the time to live first. And now we are struggling with that reality.

Don't. Don't do what several of us did. Don't take that step into total adulthood, tie down and settle without living. You'll always wonder what could have been. this is our ONLY chance to be stupid, live, explore, do. We shouldn't be settling down as an adult if we don't know who we are first. How could we know?

We were kids. Then instead of being teens, being young adults, growing up and learning, we broke. Shouldered choices and chances and horrors and work far and above what we aught to ever have faced that young. We grew up without getting a chance to grow up.

I can't speak for all of us. that's your story to tell. For me, I broke early. I broke when Josh got sick. Not because of him, but because the moment that damn c-word came into our lives,my headspace made a choice. A decision that led me to believe that I had ceased to have value to my family. I spent a year as nothing more then baggage, a liability, a drag on my family.That never changed and it led me to do some really really stupid things. I grew up in chains I put on with my choices and it took a long time to break free of some of them. I left home and took a yoke I was suited for, but unprepared for the events in training. I shattered, fled to ND and buried myself in being an adult, settling down. Took a partner, got married, had a kid and a household. Eventually moved back, had a micro-crisis, got a divorce and am now trying to rebuild things.

And I'm realizing, that if I don't take THIS one chance. If I don't make those changes NOW, take the time to learn to be an adult, to enjoy and accept things, to make my own way instead of anyone else's, that I'll NEVER get that chance. We will never be here again. Never get a chance to change who we are like this. To discover who we are, what we want. We have to do it NOW. Not tomorrow. Not next week or month or year. Not when it'll hurt less, or when the time is 'right'. It'll never be right. Change hurts. People hurt.

Have the courage to stand up and change and say that you're afraid and do it anyways. This is who I am, and I am doing me, for me. Not for anyone else.