MINERVA

When the clock struck 12 and I turned 17, my eyes were wide open, the taste of gin burning through my lips and throat, licking my insides with tongues of fire. I pick up the chaser and a tangy sweetness fills my mouth as the shouts of my friends  ring in my ears along with the beats of Vice Tone and Tiesto. 

Cheers to being 17. 

I sway a little, and blood pounds in my ears as I bring my hands together and holler for the first few minutes of entering another chapter of my life. I have noticed the changes—skirts instead of jeans, sensitive topics instead of safe, vodka instead of Coke—and I found myself tangled upon the brambles of growing up in an complex, entropic universe. I was one year behind being legal, but I acted as if I were, indulging in alcohol and truth or drink games. But I have always been like this—carefree, young, reckless but alive.

In the first hour of Day 6,208, I have taken my first full shot of gin and braved to ride a cab alone at 1:30 in the morning—tipsy with a headache beginning to erupt in my temples. In my first hour of being seventeen, a black car already stopped by with a stranger offering me a ride. A clerk at the convenience store flirtatiously asked my age as I picked out another bottle of gin for my best friend's sister, and I confidently assured him that I was eighteen. I have sung and shouted as I crossed empty streets with a few people looking at me as if I were crazy. Maybe I am. Text messages and birthday greetings flooded my screen before my phone died and I got home. I was given a chance to have a new name in which an intersubjective consensus existed among my friends.  I ordered my favorite cup of coffee with hopes that I would get home in one piece without the dangers of the night claiming me or my innocence. 

And I did get home. I got home safe and happy. I got home to where my Mom was still waiting for me, enough to realize how much of a child I still was and how much I was rushing to grow up. 

But I am growing up. I can feel it. I am growing up in a sense that I am taking in more responsibilities and treating each day as if it were the last. 

Truly, I am carpe-ing the fuck out of that diem. 

I look at the mirror, eyes red and a tired grin splayed across my lips. I let my hair down, and it tumbles over my shoulders as I fall into bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. 

Goodbye, sixteen-year-old me. Hello,  new seventeen-year-old self.