Free.

This week on the Equals Record: lessons learned after vowing to my parents that I'd be the best teenager in the world (a promise I made on my thirteenth birthday).

An excerpt from the post: "I woke up that morning feeling weighted with purpose. You’re not a child anymore, I thought to myself as I lay between sheets printed with happy-faced clouds. ‘I’m going to be the best teenager in the world,’ I told my parents, hardly able to imagine that I’d ever succumb to the hormonal turbulence I’d heard was in store for me. And looking back, I made good on that promise—for the most part, anyway. While I may not have been the best teenager on the planet, I certainly must have been among the tamest. I (hardly) touched alcohol, and never laid a finger on a drug. I didn’t date til my senior year. I never uttered a swear word, and never once fought with my brother or my parents (people never believe that last one, but it’s true)."

See the post in its entirety on the Equals Record, here. You can find past entries from my weekly column, Looking Forward (about the ups and downs of "growing up" in my twenties), here. Thank you so much for your support!

Top photo by Max Wanger. Bottom image via KushAndWizdom.