Before 17+1

This is actually after I had my 18th birthday, but what I’m going to write about is the last idea (not the last thought or what I’ve been thinking about at the last moment of my 17th age, but the last inspiration would be a more accurate wording) I had before my birthday.

I have a habit to browse through WeChat’s friends moments every morning when I’m brushing my teeth. For Chinese people, WeChat is like the combination of Message and Instagram, it’s something that everyone use to communicate with people and a platform that most people share their moments on. Unlike Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, WeChat only allows you to connect with people that you have their account number, which means that you can only see moments of your friends and you are unable to follow anyone who doesn’t knows you. I like to look through it everyday because it’s a source for me to know about my friends and what it had been happening in different places.

However, what happened exactly that morning of my birthday is I saw one of my friend liked the moment one of my other friend sent. What surprised me is that these two people seems completely separated, one of them is my elementary classmate and the other one is the friend of my friend. They live in different regions went to different school, and surprisingly, these two people are just connected together, and what they don’t know and probably can’t imagine is I’m also connected with them.

While growing up, I admire my mom as someone who’s outgoing and open, I feel like she knows people from all around the world and it seems like she is able to do anything I ask for. At this moment, I suddenly feel like I grow up, I start to become a part of the society, a part of the world. I’ve seen a quote before basically saying that one day, you will realize your friend will become your human source, and that’s the day you grow up.

Now I know what it feels like to grow up.

At that night when we had the family dinner to celebrate my birthday, my dad drank some Maotai and said a lot of things.

He told me to be brave. He said the world is in front of me and he will always be behind me, I don’t need to worry about anything and I shall always face forward.