[quote="KitalphaHart"] There's prolly a lot of several small moments The big one was getting diagnosed with cancer tho Hit three years remission back in October, before you freak out [/quote] thats very scary.

[quote="miilin"] [quote="KitalphaHart"] There's prolly a lot of several small moments The big one was getting diagnosed with cancer tho Hit three years remission back in October, before you freak out [/quote] thats very scary. [/quote]it was prom the first weekend, scan the second weekend, graduation the third, and diagnosis and start of treatment the fourth So yeah. Right from high school graduation to chemo. Not very fun

So many small moments. First time baby-sitting when I realized these young children were treating *me* as the adult (I was about four years older than they, and still pre-puberty myself). That was a moment, but not a "oh goodbye childhood forever" moment so much as an "Is *this* what I have to look forward to, and maybe my parents are just people?" moment. People talk about the moment one of their family members died but that didn't really do it for me because the first one happened when I was so young. Ehhhh, mostly just a lot of unmemorable small moments. A big one was when I became old enough to legally sign binding contracts, and do business without a parent/guardian right there. Or first paycheck, of course. First rent payment. By the time you do most of these, though, it is not an unexpected moment, or a shock, or anything more than a feeling of "Finally! Society is acknowledging that I can actually do things I've been capable of for ages now!", and then a slow gradual realization of, "But my safety net is much smaller now, or gone altogether, and the consequences of failure have changed."

As sad as it might seem, I never had much of a childhood. So there was never any one specific moment where my childhood was gone - more of just a gradual slide into adulthood with little change. D:>

Where I live, there's an odd rule that you can't buy a ticket to see a rated-R movie for anyone other than yourself unless you are at least 21 years old. It sucks if you've got a group of people going where one person is underage, and no one else is over the age of 20. I went to see a movie with a group at one point, and there was another girl with us who was 17. We started panicking when we saw that the cashier was carding everyone, only to stop when the cashier looked at the birth date on my ID and said, "The rest of you are good." It was the first time that I really considered the ramifications of being over 21. I could rent a car, I could supervise someone driving without a full driver's license, etc. It was just kind of unsettling.

[quote='Sefria'] By the time you do most of these, though, it is not an unexpected moment, or a shock, or anything more than a feeling of "Finally! Society is acknowledging that I can actually do things I've been capable of for ages now!", and then a slow gradual realization of, "But my safety net is much smaller now, or gone altogether, and the consequences of failure have changed." [/quote] That's a surprisingly apt description, by which I only mean that it surprised me how much I agreed I think the only moment like this that I can think of off the top of my head wasn't something that made me consciously think "this is it, my life as I knew it has changed," but when I visited home during winter break from my freshman year of college I got a nasty shock from someone who I'd thought was a friend but was actually, objectively, treating me very badly. He revealed that he had duped me in a long con and played with my emotions, while I was at a sort of alumni function with him... and then he was my ride home. Only with hindsight do I see how much that was a turning point- there was no one to help me, I had to navigate that all alone in a way I hadn't had to with anything else.

That does not sound pleasant at all. I hope you found a way through that let you find peace with yourself and your actions, Shrinkrae.

@sefria Thanks ; v ; Mostly, I guess. That friendship is something I wrestle with now and then, but it's been 10 years now, and it's a process, but I'm letting it go. <3

Yeah, sometimes things just aren't worth it, no matter how much was invested before. *remembers some previous moves* I still miss my first garden... It was designed to grow, and needed another forty years to really mature, and I'll never see it now...

aw man :"< that's a bummer... I've never gotten into gardening (lots of moves to apartments in my childhood, not much time for it), but it seems like such a satisfying project.