A Love Letter

Dear Seventeenth Year,

Thank you for being among the best years of my life, if not the best. Thank you for bringing me freedom, laughs, and amazing friendships that I had never experienced before. Thank you for being full of emotions that filled my spirit to the brim and overwhelmed it.

I remember when you first arrived, I scoffed.

“What good could possibly come out of being seventeen?” I thought to myself.

I’m sorry for that. As the awkward year between being sixteen and becoming an official adult at eighteen, I couldn’t possibly think of you as being anything significant, but you have now become my most favorite age to be. I’m so grateful to have lived long enough to experience you and all of your delicate intricacies. You’re an age that all jaded adults should look back on and remember with great fondness, and there is no doubt that I will do the same in the future.

Alas, the weeks are trickling by, and you’ll be gone soon. Eighteen is coming up fast, and I need to savor what little time I have left with you now. You’re the very last year of my adolescence, and I wish we could stay together forever, but adulthood is waiting. As we part and as I get older, I will forget many things - there is no way around it. My memories will compile, they will fade and disappear entirely from my mind. I just hope I’ll be able to remember the memories that you gave me.

Love,

Audrey