When you are young, you never really think about anything. When you close your eyes the world stops, and starts again when you open them. You are allowed to be selfish in your actions, because no one expects you to know how to take care of another. As you grow older, you learn to share, the world starts to be more about others and less about you. You are expected to listen and learn at school, and at home you are expected to grasp the morals your parents display. When you get to be in your teens you start to gain more knowledge, whether it is correct or not, from friends over family. This stage of your life is usually one of rebellion and proof of self sustainability, without the aid of parents. Then you get to the stage in your life where I am at. This stage started for me on my 19Th Birthday. And it is a totally new feeling. Its when you finally realise you have so much you can do with your life, but yet you have so much you need to do first. You need to start eating healthy, because you have realised that vertical growth is no longer happening but yet horizontal growth, aided by late nights involving liquor and food you usually wouldnt dare touch, has become a problem. So you start eating healthy, and then you binge, and then you eat healthy again for a while and then binge again. Your weight fluctuates more than the price of gas and you start to feel worse than you did when you were 10 pounds overweight. You are at the stage of control. You want control over your life, but yet you still know in the back of your mind that you need help. Help with anything from understanding your visa bill, and income tax statements to reading and editing an English paper you wrote. Unfortunately subconsciously something causes you to hesitate from asking for help. You tell yourself its the fact you don't want to have to deal with your "annoying parents" lecturing you, yet really its more that you spent 5 years of your life rebelling and now have an ego that is fragile, and could be broken easily by not seeming independent. So you go on scrambling through life, you have a boyfriend, you fall in love you break up, you get sad, you binge, you get sadder and starve yourself for a while. All along you are thinking you probably could use some help, so you look to your friends. Yet sometimes after so long your friends don't match with you anymore. You've grown up, they haven't. You went away to school, and learned about something completely new, they didn't and well, you are independent right? And of course, they aren't. So you go and make new friends. For a while it might seem like you have no real friends. Just a few people you talk to once in a while. But no one to really share your secrets with. You make the most mistakes in this stage of your life. No parents, no friends, just magazines and your own thoughts to keep you on, or off-track. You start meeting new people, you make new friends who you think are amazing, they are a new crowd, they have money and expensive cars and things you have never experienced. Unfortunately you soon discover they also have less appealing, more illegal things that scare you enough to break off the friendship. So alone again, you start to look for comfort, maybe in food, maybe some other hobby. Soon enough you meet new friends. These friends are good friends. They don't want to go out and drink until they can't remember their own name. These friends have something to say. And guess what, they also want to their what you have to say. You may skip some classes to spend time with these people, or even just postpone some homework to talk, but these friends make it worth it. These friends become more like your family, and then you realise, maybe your family isn't that bad. Your parents did a pretty good job raising you, if you have such good friends, so they can't be that bad either. You give your parents a call, or actually hang out with them for an afternoon and realise you have been missing out all along. Which brings me to the present. I am here and now with my parents who care, with friends who I love, and who have taught me so much. And one thing I will never forget is what one of my friends told me the other day. He said, "the 5 closest people to you will determine where you go in life" that's it. That's all. And you know what it true. And when you have those 5 friends you'll know, because suddenly your life will come together. You eating will balance out, your brain will calm down and you may even catch yourself smiling when no one else is around.