I have Keys in my hand. They're silver keys, jointed by a round, metal, silver hoop. They're my front door keys. And as I turn to lock the door I am about to, I ponder whether this is what I want. Is this the path I want to take. But for you to understand that, I may need to tell you about myself.

Telling you about myself could possibly not be the best idea. Not only because you're bound to sound completely self-absorbed, but, too, because I could just might give away much that anybody has the right to know. But, regardless, I think I'll still do so.

My name is Mellanie. I am 16 years old. And I heard once that it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. Yes, that's a mistake people do often, I know I have. I have forgotten how to live sometimes. I have forgotten how to introduce that key to my front door and lock it before I carry on where I'm headed. It's kind of hard to open your eyes at the sun, when they're adapted to the night.

I have an epiphany. I like change...withing myself. ( Ei. I would dye my hair pink one day, and go with blue the next). But it has always been hard for me to emancipate from the rest of myself and carry on ahead. It's like leaving a piece of me behind that keeps pulling my heart strings everytime I turn my back.

As a child I always tended to have this sort of issues. That's because I've always been prone to create strong bonds with people I love or things I like. So as I grew, It would be normal to leave things behind as you chase the years of your life and sort of build your own path, though it never was for me. That was something I never liked to do.

I grew up in a neighborhood different than this on I live now. I watched myself grow in that place, you know? I clearly remember the friends I had, the way we used to stay up late trashing down our street playing spy games with guns we would make out of empty rolls of toillet paper and tape. I clearly remember us at the front steps of each other's house playing LEGO in the moonlight and how one pair of brother's spent their life grounded inside their house. It was a street everyone was friends with one another, parents included, so we would stay up late playing that spy game and tresspasing backyards and supressing that excitement you would get when you played hide and seek, always hoping you wouldn't get caught.

It was beautiful how the sun shone in those days of summer and how the wind blew you hair in your face not letting you see, when you were actaully trying not to crash with the fence as you raced your friends in bikes with no brakes. Does that make any sense? I had a friend who had like three Golden Retrievers who s----ed more that they ate around the whole backyard and we used to play bare-footed hide-n-seek which actually would always turn into the game of evading piles of s--- around the place.

I had a nice childhood. More than what I could ask for. And at 16 I could still picture myself through the eyes of that 8-year old, because at such a young age I could afford to love people, places and moments and realize how much they meant to me and how much they helped me grow, carrying me through that phase which I call my Childhood. I guess I have always been a little different at that.

It came the time when I had to move. And I can still remember crying myself to sleep for days and days and thinking how I would never be happy again aways from the place and the pople I grew up with. Of course, at 16, now I understand that that wasn't true. But though I'm older now, I think I'm still naive. And that is something I won't ever deny.

Ok, so I moved. I moved and I learned. I had to. It may be described as receiving a big, fat slap on your face after doing something reckless. But I did. I had to learn how to detach myself. As time passed I learned to love this place that has been my home for the past 5 to 6 years. I really did, and I still do, actually. I love how the drizzle spread through the pavement in the morning. I love how the birds sing round 3pm waiting for my mom to get home from work. And I really love the breeze that shakes the big tree beside my house, though my mother gets pissed off at the leaves.

You see, I've learned to enjoy the small things in life. Like how my mother's eyes gleam in the moonlight as she tells her own childhood stories and how it all seems to shake her and take her back to those times when life was more simpler and you really did not have to worry about working of paying those bills. It's beautiful how her face lights up at those foreign thoughts as we're both scattered around our front steps kind of bored of life sometimes. But she likes it. And if she likes it, so do I.

So as I step out of what was to what is and what will be, I leave a piece of my heart behind. Miraculously, it advises me and tells me that I'll be fine. And so it occurs to me that I don't need these keys, these keys with the silver, metal hoop that joins them together. I don't need to lock my door as I step out to my life, because, I realize, with closing it is enough. Because, you know, I realize that I love it here, too. I love this room with the bedside lamp that has aided me through years at writing my thoughts and these walls that probable know me better that I know myself. This room where I became almost a woman amd where I read till my eyes dropped and cried when I didn't have my way. This room where I decided to leave something behind.

...And so I have an epiphany, because as I step out of my body, turn around and take a look at myself, I see far behind to where I've been and I see where I'm headed. I realize that yes, where I am doesn't hold my childhood. But it holds something much more important than that. My adolescence.

My name is Mellanie and I'm 16 years old. I have keys in my hand. They're silver keys jointed by a round, metal, silver hoop. And Maybe for the first time in my life, I realize...I'm not home anymore.