If it was ten years ago and you had asked me to describe myself in three words. I'd say normal, normal and normal. I was just like everyone else and I lived my life just like any normal kid my age. I lived in the Home Sector of Findor, in a family home designed to make anyone who walked through its doors feel warm and comfortable.

It always managed to do it's job. But not today. Today I was filled with nerves, stress and anxiety.

I stayed in one of the numerous City Sectors across our extensive state. It was called Findor. Findor was home to a number of sub-sectors. Sub- sectors ranged from Forests to Mines. Some City Sectors were further divided into Units.

One such unit, is where I stayed with my parents. I lay on my bedroom floor, staring at my ceiling. It was a bright white colour which perfectly complemented my blue-grey walls. The colour reminded me of something I had learnt a couple years ago, it was called The Ocean. I had only seen photos of it and for some reason I was always fascinated by it.

I had a projector that shone directly onto the ceiling. It's pure white coloring made it the perfect background for it to periodically shift between photos of me and my family during my childhood and teenage years. It was irrefutable evidence that I had had a "normal" childhood life.

I sat up and pulled a blue fluffy pillow off of my twin sized bed and lay it on the floor. Looking around my room, I realized how much I was going to miss it's homey and comforting atmosphere. From my silver sheen curtains to my soft, down-filled comforter. I was really going to miss this life. I was going to miss my "regular" life. I lay back down on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the projector to start.

Click.

I smiled. Pixels of pure joy was splayed across the ceiling. It was the day I had I learnt how to ride a bicycle, shown by a photo of me and my dad smiling up at the camera, with smiles stretched across our faces. I remembered that day like it was yesterday, but not because of the bike. Moments after that photo was taken, I fell and scraped my knee. It was pretty bad.

I distinctly remember my dad applying a funny smelling ointment on my knee and my mom telling me to relax and focus on her. She was trying to distract me from the awful sight of my knee, but that wasn't necessary. The burning sensation had suddenly disappeared and when I looked back at my knee, there was no sign of injury at all. No scar, no bruise - just a flawless knee cap of unblemished skin. My parents made me swear not to tell anyone what had happened. I never did, it was just not in me to disobey them.

I rarely got injured after that day, and to think of it, I don't remember ever getting injured before that day either. I never thought it was strange or unusual. That was until the day one of my friends fell and hurt herself.

Click.

Like clockwork, the projector snapped to a photo of me and my best friend Hope. Hope and I were playing on the swing set in my backyard, when one of the screws came loose and she fell. She hurt her arm pretty badly and had to be rushed to a place called a Hospital.

I had never been there before and when I asked Hope about it, she said she didn't remember anything about her time there. Her arm had to be wrapped up in a thick white gauze and she had to have help doing all of her activities. Her arm healed eventually but there was one thing I could never understand.

Why couldn't my parents just use the strange smelling ointment they used for me, for Hope on the day that she fell? I remember thinking that I was a genius and was about to suggest this to my mom and dad who had come running in response to Hope's screams of pain, but the look I received from my mother told me to keep very quiet. I never asked about it, nor mentioned it after that day.

I still had a fairly regular life. I learnt to paint, I camped in the Forest Sector and I played many games. I had dinner with my parents every night and went to sleep cuddled up with my dearest teddy bear and most comfortable blanket.

I was meant to live this "normal" life until I turned eighteen. My eighteenth birthday was just a few hours away and everything was changing. Or at least, it was beginning to.

Click. Click. Click.

The projector snapped through the rest of my photos and then it went black. I sat up with a sigh. I had enjoyed my life, my "normal" life and I wasn't sure I was ready for it to change. Change hadn't been a big part of my life for the past 17.99 years, but I knew it was inevitable. We all did.

When anyone turned eighteen, the rest of their life would begin. We were brought up knowing that one day we would have to leave home, we would have to leave our parents and move on with the next stage of our lives. What that stage was, we never knew. Nobody did.

It was determined and shown to us by something called The Glow. I had learnt all about The Glow during our unit lessons. Lessons were something everyone in the family had to attend and The Glow was always the most important part of any lesson.

Lessons were absolutely essential as they prepared us for our lives after eighteen. The lessons prepared us to be able to function and survive outside the city, or even inside the city. Nobody really knew where The Glow would choose to send someone. All we did know, was that we needed to be prepared for as much as we possibly could.

I had gone through years worth of lessons, I had studied, read and learnt as much as I could about The Glow and all its recorded possibilities. Yet unsurprisingly, even with my years worth of knowledge, I still felt ridiculously unprepared for this change. I had no idea what to expect, even though I had read through every single lesson I had ever been given. The continuous stream of chatter everywhere I went didn't seem to help my nerves much either.

The Glow was a popular subject amongst every single friend and family conversation. Discussions seemed to centre around each and every teenagers eighteenth year that loomed closer and closer with each and every day that went passed.

The Glow was the name given to this phenomenon by the Leaders because of the faint glow everyone got once they had received their pathway. It was an illuminated pathway of their course, lit up for only its individual to follow. The emphasis being on its individual. Nobody else could see where their path led, they could only see the individual's glow. Each family had a different name or term for it. Some called it a 'Streak' and others called it an 'Ignited Map'.

We called it Destiny.