Am I the only one having a hard time with this transition?

Puberty is, most assuredly, the obvious nearly impossible change a girl experiences. All one wants is to have perky breasts, clear skin, brace-less teeth, and the adoration of the boys. All one gets during those agonizing, painful years is a mouthful of metal, red blotches, and humiliation.

However, this metamorphosis I’ve been experiencing in my early twenties is a far greater challenge. The most difficult matter is the truth that any pain or pleasure a girl experiences during these years of single freedom and emancipation is usually a result of one’s own choices. That’s how it feels anyway. No longer can I blame, or thank, my parents for where I live, what I eat, how I fail, or when I succeed. Nor may I yet acknowledge a husband or children for affecting the life I lead. I wake when I chose, work where I can according to the education I’ve attained and the success I’ve aspired to, and live where the money I make affords me…

Kris and me in Hollywood

Yesterday morning I woke in my childhood home in New Jersey to my mother’s gentle prompting. Bleary-eyed I followed her to her bed where we laid. My boyfriend, the one I believe is to be with me for good, slept in the other bedroom.

Tears filled my mom’s eyes and she apologized, “I think we’re too close sometimes. Or, you’re a bit of a soul-tie to me. I am sorry if I’ve ever guilted you into spending time with me or made you feel you shouldn’t ever leave.” She was partially referring to my boyfriend Drew’s invitation to stay in New York with him several days out of this visit home. I began to cry too.

“How could you ever think that? I love you. I hate leaving. Its not you; it’s me too.”

“No, that’s my fault,” she insisted. Tears ran down my cheeks and a realization filled my heart and mind.

“You know what, momma? This is so hard for me. I just want to be a little girl forever; or at least it feels like I do.” I explained to her things I scarcely realized that I felt. I’m only beginning to realize how difficult it has been for me to become a woman. I just want to hug my Daddy-o for hours, lay in my momma’s arms, and play fight with my brother Kris everyday of my life, but I can’t. Those days are over.

As much as a girl longs to fall in love, once she has, its time to cast her childhood aside, leave her family, and create her own. New traditions and new children; she cannot be one of the children any longer.

Please do not mistake me; I am not sad to be in love, and I am not ungrateful. However, for a girl who’s had the most amazing family and childhood, it is so difficult to acknowledge that it is time to leave. Sometimes the guilt that I already left four years ago plagues me.

These are my choices. I chose to leave. I chose to run in pursuit of dreams I often cannot even see. I chose to become a woman.