Eighteen

Izel Nava (She/Her)

Editorial Team Member

San Antonio, 2024

I’ve spent all my life wondering what I would be like at a certain age. At eight I wanted to be ten, at ten I wanted to be fifteen, and at fifteen I wanted to be eighteen. In two months eighteen will become a reality. And as I watch all the people around me get older, I become excited about adulthood, or at the very least the illusion of it. I’m old enough to know that my life will shift. That I’ll lose, win, cry, and laugh. But the one thing I’ll fight to keep is the respect I have for the younger, naive, part of myself. Respect for the child in me who loved to write about princesses and princes, the preteen who spent hours trying on clothes that would make me “cool”, and the teenager who learned to love herself and the family she found along the way.