It's a tricky thing

It's a tricky thing; growing up, getting older, that is.

One day, you are your parents' child. The world is laid out before you like a red carpet of opportunity and adventure. You are but one grain of sand in a beach full.

You go to sleep one night, and when you wake up, you are your own person. You look around and realize that you are now securely established on that carpet that that was previously laid out before you. You are still one in a sea of a million, but suddenly, its more like you are one person in a sea of hundreds of people on that beach. The individual particles now softly giving way under the weight of your labored step.

You look back and kinda, sorta - through the gray haze of the years - can see the point where you grew up. But, like a star, you have to look with your peripherial vision. Otherwise you lose it in the march of time that is your life.