& I'm just a girl.

Maturity.

Maturity.
What is it determined by?
Age?

You turn 13 and you have this responsibility thrust on your sholders? Because magically you've been alive 13 years and you're a teenager?
What if you're not ready?

I wasn't.
I doubted I would ever be.
I guess the only good that came from having responsibility I wasn't capable of having was that you learn to deal with it.
You learn to suck it up and to keep going. Because thats whats expected of you. Because they expect you to magically understand everything about everything. And you can't screw up because your a teenager and the moment you screw up, the moment you make a mistake, they repremand you. And you still don't understand.
You're left thinking
'that was wrong? I didn't know that, why won't they listen?'
But they won't listen. Because you just made them lower their expectations of you, because you didn't know. But how would you know? They aren't going to make mistakes for your benefit. Because that would put a scratch on their record. Heaven forbid they did something wrong. Heaven forbid they have an accident.

************************

I think people grab on to their past. I think that when the end of the day comes and theres nothing left to hold onto they hold onto their memories because those are the one thing that can stay there and won't leave-won't disapear on them when everything else is gone and all the records are ash on the floor and the battles over. When the dust settles all you have is the past and the scars and the pain. And lord the pain doesn't go away. It doesn't go away.
And that's why I think that maturity is when you've been through a battle where you knew, you knew, you were going to lose. And you fought anyway. And when you lost, even after you lost everything you were fighting for, every last thing in the world you cared about, you decide not to look at the past and you decide to turn around and look ahead to the new battlefield in front of you. And you walk forward on the green grass, and you decide you won't let any more of your blood be spilled.

That, I think, is when you are mature. And I mean really mature.

Most adults aren't this mature. I have met very few.

Hell most adults will never be this mature.

But that's okay.

Because maturity does not come with age or title or sex or race. Maturity is something far beyond most of us and that won't change. You have to be in pain, a tremoundous amout of pain, to be that mature. And I hope you aren't mature. That kind of pain is intolerable.

But if you have been through a pain like that. And you couldn't breathe.
And it hurt, and sometimes it still hurts.
But your looking ahead, I commened you.
Because you, in my definition, are mature and wise and I can do nothing more then commened you.