Growing Up When You’re Old

Don’t try to guide me, change me, or direct me because you will lose me.
I have been guided, directed and advised to the point of near death to my spirit and I need to find out who I am and what I want and I need to do it my way.
I need to learn to trust my own choices and my own decisions and to follow my own instincts and I have never demanded that freedom.
I need to go to the grocery store and not stand in front of the peanut butter for thirty minutes, trying to decide which brand or size I should pick up.
I got married at sixteen, straight from my mother’s house and my father’s control.
The only freedom to think for myself that I’ve known since then was the two years when I was on my own with three kids, and even…