21

Sometimes you’re 21 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like your future and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but that place probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else, but just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and that person feels light years away. You realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.

-Tejiana Atkins

One of my friends wrote this a bit back and I really enjoyed it. Reading and sharing it, reminds me of myself and brings a wave of nostalgia over me. Writing this blog, tracking my travels, experiencing being twenty-one and living such an exciting life. Thinking about when I was a young girl seems so far away. I never knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, in fact I still don’t. One thing I didn’t realize when I was a young girl is that sometimes your whole entire life can change in a minute that can effect what you will do or who you will become. Mine changed when I was 19 years old on my first day of my sophomore year of college. My oldest brother died unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Something I never had imagined would happen to me. I didn’t get to say goodbye, I hadn’t talked to him in a couple of weeks and I felt sad. Since then I know I am not the same, the person I was before is foreign to me now. When something horrible and tragic happens like that I believe a person has two ways to look at life. You could become totally depressed and live your life with regrets, thinking I could’ve done this or that or now I can never get to talk to them anymore. And this does happen, instantly when someone so close to you dies you think of everything so fast you can’t even keep up with your own thoughts. My brother wouldn’t see me graduate college, or come to my wedding or be a part of my life anymore, he was gone. The 19 years I had with him is all I will ever get and as a little girl I expected a lifetime with him. The way I look at life is to be incredibly thankful and happy. Think of the good and the bad, remember that you are real, the people you have in your life are real and are there for a reason.

Since my sophomore year of college I have only grown as a person. I transferred to Fordham University my junior year and I will be entering my senior year after this summer and graduating spring 2015. Whenever I get down or depressed I let it happen but only for about five minutes because I know it will pass. I will breath, maybe cry then smile, emotions are a part of being alive. Death is like being hit with lighting, fast, unexpected and real. Life goes on, no matter how much something can erupt life it continues. People continue to go to work, go to school and build relationships. My friend’s story isn’t exactly about death but it is relatable. It is about growing up and figuring life out. Relationships grow and fade. We change and don’t remember being our 16-year-old selves just wanting the freedom to drive. For me there is no more comfort of my brother, his phone number is still in my phone but I can’t bring myself to delete it. Even knowing I can never call it again. I guess I keep it there just as reminder he was real. Everything I have learned from this tragedy in my life is to keep going. You don’t know what can happen today or tomorrow. Smile and keep doing your absolute best, because even if today feels like shit tomorrow is a new day full of wonderful opportunities.