Do You Remember 19

Sometimes, you are just 19 – standing in your kitchen on a Friday morning, wondering how you woke up late again and didn’t have time for breakfast. You rush through your morning, still feeling the weight of the night before, but it’s okay. You’ll make do with what you’ve got. You’ll grab something small later. Maybe a snack from the fridge. Maybe a piece of fruit, though you can’t remember the last time you really craved one. You’re just 19, and this moment is fleeting. You wonder, as you pull your jacket over your shoulders, how you’re going to say goodbye to the teenage years. You’re still not sure when or how, but you’ve got thirty Fridays left. Just thirty.

It feels strange to count time in Fridays. Time is fleeting in a way that’s hard to grasp, like trying to catch a leaf in the wind, and yet here you are, trying to keep track. You reflect on the small things—the details that often slip away unnoticed—and something nags at you. Four summers ago, you loved strawberries. It was an obsession really, the juiciness of the fruit, the sweetness, the way they stained your hands. But now, you can’t even stand the sight of them. They remind you of something, a feeling or a time you can’t quite put into words. You wonder how you’ve changed so much without even noticing it.

And then your mind wanders to other things. There were floors that saw your tears slide down from your cheeks, dripping onto the cold surface beneath you, as you thought the world might swallow you whole. They saw you at your lowest, at moments when you couldn’t see past the pain. Yet, somehow, those floors remain, unshaken, carrying the memory of your hurt without judgment. Now, they just stand there, bearing the weight of things that used to matter so much.

Your coffee order from last semester—changed because your best friend liked it that way. You can still remember sitting at your favorite café, laughing with them about stupid things, the world feeling like it was always going to be just like that. But things change. Time, distance, people. And now, you haven’t spoken to them in months. You wonder what they’re up to, how they’re doing, and if they’re still ordering their coffee the way you used to. You never really figured out why things changed. Sometimes, things just do. Sometimes, people grow in ways you never expected.

The new book you bought two afternoons ago is sitting on your nightstand. It was an impulse buy, really. Not something you’d normally pick up. You almost feel like you *should* read it. You look at the cover, the title, the promise of something new, but deep down, you know it’s not your type. Yet, the thought lingers—what if this is the book that shifts something inside you? What if it’s the one that helps you make sense of the chaos of these last few years? You aren’t sure. You just feel like you should give it a try, as if reading it will mean something.

You remember when you hated your hair for nine months. You couldn't stand how it looked, the way it fell flat, the way it framed your face in all the wrong ways. It felt like a reflection of who you were at the time—unsure, uncomfortable in your own skin. But time passed, and now it’s just a part of you. The hair you once despised is now a symbol of growth, of how you’ve learned to love yourself in ways you never thought possible.

The windows in the apartment you viewed yesterday were bigger than yours. They let in so much more light, and you caught yourself imagining what it would be like to live there. You felt both excited and uncertain, drawn to the space yet hesitant to leave what you know. You wonder what it’s like to make that kind of leap, to make a change that big, to move somewhere new and start fresh. You wonder if you’re ready for that yet, or if you’ll ever feel ready at all.

You also think about how you’ve hurt people in the past, how sometimes, you can’t help but feel bad for the things you’ve said or done. Maybe it was in the heat of the moment, maybe it was because you were hurting too. But the regret lingers. You think about how you hurt them when they hurt you, and now it’s too late to go back and fix it. Sometimes, you think maybe you just needed to forgive yourself before you could move on.

And then, as you stand there, holding your cup of coffee, it hits you—maybe making mistakes is okay. Maybe it’s part of growing up, part of being human. The mistakes, the regrets, the changes—they all fit into the story of who you are. You realize that you don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to have everything figured out. You can make mistakes, clean out the jar of Nutella at night, and still find peace in the little moments. The world feels alright when you’re tucked into your warm bed at night, surrounded by the softness of your blankets and the quiet of your thoughts.

You think back to when you were 16. Back then, your entire childhood felt like a long, drawn-out feeling of wanting to be anywhere but here. You thought you knew what it would be like to be older, to be free of all the things that held you down. You didn’t know that being 19 would feel like this—standing in your kitchen, wondering if you forgot to put sugar in your coffee again. And somehow, that’s okay. Because sometimes, you’re just 19, figuring it all out, one small moment at a time.