November 16, what is the moment you leave childhood and enter adulthood

While this prompt begs a few hundred witticisms (and I'm sure there are hundreds of blogs posting at least one)  it caught me in a more pensive mood and so I'll leave the humour for someone else.   As an exact moment, for many, there isn't one, it is a transition that takes place over time, but if I had to give a universal defining moment, I'd say it is the moment when you realize the consequences of your actions are as important as the actions themselves.  As children, we truly believe in the "Do Over" and that a mother's kiss will solve any hurt, and that "I'm sorry" makes everything okay again.  The thing is, that while many of us start over (at least once, and for some of us, many many times)  you don't get a chance to "do over"   You can't unring a bell, and when what is done is done, all you can do is move past it, or hunker down behind it, or stay stuck in it.  A mother's kiss will lose all of it's magic (if it even ever had any for you) the first time your hurt is bigger than your faith that someone else can take your pain away.  And "I'm sorry," unless used in the form of sympathy, rarely is ever even enough.   In my house, we don't really even say it, because my response to it is "good for you"  you being sorry doesn't change the fact that you hurt someone else, or that you lied, stole, cheated, abused, ignored, were careless... whatever... you being sorry is about you... not about being responsible for whatever it is you have done.  So, yeah, I think that there is a moment that all of these things coalesce and we become adults... at least in our thinking, if not yet in our actions.  Now, trauma will change a child into the semblance of an adult at any age-- but it's rarely a fully fnctioning adult.  There is a moment in our lives that we recognise ourselves as adults, but I think that the change in the way we understand the way the world responds to us is what really makes the difference.   
Make something beautiful with your heart and your hands,
Kaere