What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think back to being 18?

Innocence fading; ok it still a few more years for me to lose my innocence completely but I believe that a big chunk of it was lost in the year I turned 18. I could legally drink in India (back then it was still 18+) but that was not how I lost my innocence.

I was quite naive back then. I believed in only good, I believed that all people were good. Even then ones who wanted to harm others and me. I just thought that they had lost their way and it just took a few eye opening dialogues to open their hearts & minds to goodness again. I blindly trusted people, people who I thought were my friends and who I thought wouldn’t harm me. I thought they had my back like I had theirs. How quickly they ran and turned their backs on me when the tide changed!

I shall also remember the age of 18 as being the first time I got really intimate, physically with someone for the first time, my then girlfriend. I shall forever remember the thrill, the emotional & physical closeness and the magic of it all. We broke up 3 years later and I haven’t seen or spoken to her since I was 22/23.

By the time I turned 19 I was onto another adventure and away from home for a year. But 18….man that was a year of sadness and happiness.