I left home at the age of seventeen.

My parents shipped me from France off to the Big Apple to translate my "brilliant" brain power into a promising career.
I have always been an obedient girl, a good student, a good older sister. I have never been perfect, I am still not, but I've always tried to improve my skills. Get better grades in Math, improve this, improve that and mainly do what you are expected to.

Everything changed when I was nineteen.

My parents wanted me to be a doctor. I wasn't so sure about that, but I really wanted to please them and I really wanted to live in Israel... so in 2001 I decided to spend my summer volunteering in an ambulance station in Jerusalem.

Growing up has NOTHING to do with AGE.

On Thursday, August 9th 2001, I found myself involved in the rescue of the victims of the Sbarro bombing. It was a regular summer day and some people never went home that day just because they went to eat pizza or crossed a busy street at the wrong time.

Growing up is like being kicked in the butt and projected way way ahead of your age. Way ahead of yourself, way ahead of everything you've known this far.

To me, growing up was about this sudden insight one can have only when everything has turned so awfully surreal and there is no turning back. When I went to my friend's wedding the Sunday after that Thursday, I hugged her as tight as I could, tears running down my cheeks. She must have thought I was crazy. I didn't care. In fact, I couldn't care less if I was perfect or not so perfect, pretty or ugly, slim or fat, short or tall. All of it no longer mattered. I was alive. Some people just didn't have that much chance.

My glasses have been switched forever. My priorities have changed. The gears are still up and running but the direction is so very different. Everything seems upside down. I have gained so much maturity in less than a half hour. I have had a glimpse on something absolutely huge with no room for ignorance and make belief.

True, sometimes I forget what it is simply to be around and healthy. Troubles do find their way back to you and silly complains about routine is a way of healing. But I was grown up. I was a grown up because I suddenly understood what life really meant. What every moment well spent really was about. That even though we all make a lot of plans no one guarantees our ends.

And nothing is really worth fighting over after all.

I turned back and looked at my path. There, I saw my parents still standing behind.

Everything has changed.

I am a grown up now.

I am not sure they are.

Learn more about this author, Esther Avinoam.
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