No one warns you about the last time you get to be a kid.
There’s no announcement,
no final bell,
no moment where someone says,
“this is it, hold onto it.”
It just … slips.
And suddenly, somewhere between
“you’re still young” and
“you should know better by now,”
I’m standing here, seventeen,
almost eighteen,
like I’m on the edge of something
I never agreed to.
Because once it happens,
that's it.
No more “minor.”
No more “you have time.”
No more being seen as someone who's still figuring things out.
Just,
an adult.
With expectations.
With responsibilities. With a future that stops feeling far away and starts feeling like it’s breathing right behind me.
And I don’t think people understand how fast it all moved.
how I was just a kid, like, actually a kid, not that long ago.
Laughing too loud, not thinking about consequences, believing time was something you could waste and still have more of.
Now everything feels counted.
Every choice matters.
Every step feels permanent.
Like I’m building a life
I don’t even feel ready to live yet.
And the scariest part?
I’m still learning how to be me.
And maybe
that’s what this is…
the moment you realize
It doesn’t last forever.
And I see it
in my parents.
In the way they look at me a second longer than before.
In the quiet questions about where I’ll go, what I’ll do,
when I’ll come back home.
Like they’re already trying to prepare themselves for a version of the house without me in it.
Because I’m their first.
I think that’s what hurts them most:
not just that I’m leaving,
but that it’s the beginning of everything changing.
And I don’t know how to hold that.
How to be excited and terrified and guilty all at the same time.
Seventeen isn’t just an age.
It’s a doorway.
And I’m standing in it,
one foot in childhood, one foot in everything else,
trying to hold on just a little longer before it closes behind me.
And before I walk through it, I wonder if they’re ready to let me go,
or if they’re standing on the other side of that door,
wishing they could keep me
just a little longer.
Ella Zambo is a high-school student and aspiring writer from Canada with a passion for storytelling and poetry. Her work often explores themes of identity, emotion, and the complicated experience of growing up. Inspired by personal experiences and the world around her, Ella enjoys creating pieces that feel honest and relatable to other teenagers. Outside of writing, she enjoys track and field and spending time developing her creativity through literature. Ella hopes to pursue psychology in the future, though she is also considering studying English to continue building a career connected to writing and language. “Seventeen, Almost Gone” reflects her interest in capturing the emotional intensity of adolescence and the feeling of being caught between youth and adulthood.