It’s hard being a new adult. At the strike of midnight on the 18th year you’re alive — bam, adulthood. Before, you may have done adult things, or acted like an adult, but you were never truly part of the crowd. Not until you became 18.

It’s funny how much difference it made when you were 17 just a few seconds before. And now you’re here and you don’t feel all that different. Adulthood used to be a fuzzy term; you’d skip all the years between 19 and 30 because, in your imagination, it was always the successful you, not the struggling-through-the-steps you.

When I was a kid, I would always make these extravagant plans about what I’d do when I grow up. “Grow up” is such a funny term; it could mean that glorious moment when one becomes 18-years-old, or beyond that. Like in your 30s. As such, I had these far away plans, much like how one would imagine some character’s growth in a world not so different from our own. Even up until high school, as I inched towards the coveted 18-year mark, I was still devising my own success in the near-future. Even then, I thought it was still out of my reach, despite my counting down the years on one hand. I suppose it was a little fantastical considering I wanted to be a famous writer, well-known after my death (after all, fame after death is of indefinite amount. Since I’m alive, I’ll never know exactly how famous I’ll be, ever. It’s quite the fantasy.).

Imagine my surprise when I’m allowed on a team to publish weekly articles. In my other life as a music major, I actually get paid to play. Here they are, these opportunities I’ve dreamed of so long, after agonizing years of standardized education. And yet, I find it almost too good to be true. Everything I’m doing now, I can reap the benefits later in another near-future, a more concrete posterity in which I can finally see myself doing what I want to do. I’m thrust into a world where suddenly, every route is visible to my mind’s eye. I can take this path or that path or that one, and they could lead to the same place, or branch out to extremely different destinations. How overwhelming! How different it is from the confines of Before-18 and Before-College. How terrifying that what I’ve wanted all along has finally taken form. The part of me shirking from these delights, still thinking that these opportunities are but a dream, is the teenager-adult on the fence of this coveted 18 year mark. I never really learned to grasp opportunities, always inhibited by parent-made ideals and rules that indirectly affected the sights of my heart (Granted, I was a sheltered Asian kid whose parents only wanted her to do well in studies. After that I would be free to do what they thought I wanted to do.).

So here I am, writing about how surreal the reality has become. If I could describe the feeling, it’s an extremely thin veil between me and the world. It’s a child in a onesie wading through a crowd of adults in suits holding briefcases, following in footsteps here and there to get a glimpse of the other side. Or a lobster — or an insect, or something — too big for its shell. Once I burst free I’ve become that much more capable, or lethal, or desirable or vain. I’m 19 now, a year older than I was last year. Then, I had thought extending my hand towards my future was impossible. Now, while I’m living it, I still think how impossible it is. Really, I’m in denial here.

I don’t think this is what it feels like to be an adult. I don’t know if I’ll ever know the feeling of it. But, in this instant, I can feel the anticipation of greater things waiting for me.