I'm about to turn twenty-one. What happened? Yesterday I was seventeen- short blonde curls getting in my eyes- long limbs curled up beneath me as I sat upon a decades old couch- writing my vampire stories in spiral notebooks. I wrote of love and lust- loss and light... And I scribbled poetry on the backs of notecards and tests- promising myself in quiet whispers that I would someday be published.

I'm about to turn twenty-one. Things are complicated now. Life is quicker- harder- deeper... It cuts grooves into time and takes away precious moments that no longer trail along quietly- a stream with no flow behind it.

I'm about to turn twenty-one. There are no more soft places- there is harsh reality. There's bills to pay. No fantasy here. I would trade credit cards for magic powers anyday- but when I was seventeen... which was more real?

When I was seventeen, I imagined. That's what I did. I almost lived within my worlds- I wrote novel after novel- poem after poem... breathing life into the characters I had created from my own heart.

I'm about to turn twenty-one. My short story is getting published in a book. My article is being published in a magazine. If these gifts had been given to me at seventeen, I would have wept and died and carried on like a child- for all my mature dances, I still held onto the child-like wonder and hope that I would become published. It's all I really cared about. Writing. Writing- it filled me.

Now, there is love. And I am filled- in such a different fashion.

I'm about to turn twenty-one...

Ah. How times change.