Laugh and love and forgive relentlessly, even and especially when you don’t think you can. Be happy whenever you can and make others happy even more often.

Appreciate everything, every moment alive, happy or sad, every breath of air and sip of water, every surprise and every opportunity. Every friend and family member and every person that loves you. And love them back.

Remember the past, but don’t mourn it. Expect the future, but don’t look to it. Stay in the moment. Stay young, being crazy and stupid and making memories and mistakes and becoming a legacy. And then stay young forever.

I’m an adult now. I turned 18 this summer, meaning I’m legally allowed to get married, buy a house, and have a full time job. But I’m really just a kid. I’m a college student. Struggling my way through the second semester of my freshman year, but still writing about high school like it’s never going to end.

I’m immature, my age doesn’t mean I actually grew up. I still run around in the grass and the sun in the summer like I did when I was young. I’m a dreamer like a kid too, no matter how many times I’ve learned that I shouldn’t be. No matter how many times that part of myself has let me down. I see the future like an empty journal where I get to write the story inside. Because that’s something else I am.

I’m a writer, and a reader, and a listener. I’m an artist and a dancer and a singer in the shower. I’m a daughter and a sister, a friend and a best friend. I’m a lover and I know that I am loved, too.

Most importantly I’m human, just as we all are. I’m a heart and lungs and blood running through veins. I’m a breather and a liver, a persistent piece of life on Earth. And so are you. We smile and laugh and cry and scream. We keep going when we think we can’t. We are survivors of this world we live in, above everything else; human.