Yesterday was my birthday. I am 19 now. When I type it like that, it still looks like such a small number. Nineteen, only nine years more than ten. But, when I say it out loud, it sounds much older. Nineteen, that's only one year shy of twenty, one year shy of being half way to being middle-aged. I'm already older than many of the "woman", girls really, who my mother works with in the labor and delivery department (it's not a department, what is it called when referring to an area of a hospital?) of the hospital. And I'm in college and all independent and stuff. But it's hard work. I think that I would rather go back to being one year shy of ten. Being nine years old and having no worries, except for the occasional tantrum and not being able to watch what I want on tv, or not being allowed to spend as much time as I would like to on the computer.

But I guess nineteen is okay too. It works.

And then, I fell asleep with a smile on my face, it was so big that it was almost painful, and it wouldn't stop. But the smile was a result of something entirely removed from my birthday