Being 18

A very good afternoon.
The Topic for my speech is: Life from the eyes of an 18 year old.
I would like to begin with one of my favorite quotes that goes thus:
“The most difficult phase of your life is not when no one understands you, it is when you don’t understand yourself.”
With this I would like to take you down your memory lane and give you a glimpse of my life, as to how it feels to be 18!
18 signals the end of the childhood days and the start of the adventures of adulthood. To some, it is exciting and promising while to others it is about facing more responsibilities. Its surprising how people expect teenagers all over the world to magically become mature on their 18th birthday!!
While others are thinking of how I should live my life, I am experiencing some very different things.
For the first time in my life, Ive been scared about growing old and the responsibilities that come along!! Its ironic because just a year ago, I couldn’t wait to turn 18.
A research shows that human beings have about 60 to 80 thousand thoughts a day. However being 18 I can totally guarantee that they’re not less than a million for me!
Thoughts from planning what to do in a day, what book to read, what career to aim for, planning today and the next after and the day after and after all the planning trying to remember what I needed to do today! Thinking about globalization and saving animals, about something that my teacher, about wanting to contribute to the family financially, and about a boy who didn’t call me today, about wanting to give meaning to my life and about allowing myself things that were forbidden earlier…
My thoughts are so contradictory. They confuse me sometimes because when I feel like I’m king of the world, the very next moment I feel that everything could be taken away. There seems to be a vicious cycle of frustration, moments of joy, happiness and enthusiasm, feeling naughty and silly, fortunate and rebellious, alone and insecure, and at times hurt and regretful. We were children just last year! And now because im 18, Im stuck between childhood and adulthood. Its amazing how just a number can change the way I behave and feel. There are days when I just play with my dog, go out to eat ice cream with family and watch a movie. Days I spend alone, reading a book and thinking about how I want to see myself in the next 10 years. Then there are care free days when Im out with friends till late in the night, doing everything that teenagers are expected to do and the next morning I feel like a little girl again. I may have become a hard core Brad Pitt fan but my favorite movie is still Lion King, I think about how my friends let me down and feel guilty about the mistakes I made, I keep planning how my life will be ahead, and the very next second I realize that actually life is everything that happens while we're busy making other plans and that scares me. There are days when Im randomly happy, days when I just cant get things straight and days I swear I just want to kill someone and have an evil laugh after that!
And at the end of all of this…I realize that I’m just a girl trying to find my place in this world and 18 seems a like a good age to start doing so...