I know that the world tells you that you’re an adult now. That with the end of school, the wild wonder of your soul is lost once and for all. All the books tell their story until here and not further. And you’re afraid that the two standing where a one used to stand in your age means grey and sad and second-best, that it means never again this young, this free, this immortal. But here’s a secret. Those that have reached their two? They feel the same. Never as young again, never as beautiful. The ones with a three? Never this independent, raw, bursting with colours. 

Listen, sweetest – a lot happens to you now. So much happens when you’re young. It all burns and you are so bright that it all feels like nothing but darkness lies ahead. You’ll always be a bit small and unfinished inside. We’re all a little lost and soft and broken at our edges. But you don’t have to be whole (nobody ever is, really) to be good. You don’t have to look at the spot someone else your age is standing in right now. The forest they’ve traveled to may be beautiful, but their rainforest is not where you need to go to grow your roses. And if you need a rainforest after all, for the new wild you’ve found after you thought it was all gone, then it will grow from your own hands, and your own years. 

I know you’re afraid that anything important has passed, and your own importance with it. It hasn’t. It couldn’t, not ever, because ever moment and year and all of your life matters, and will make all you do and change become history.