I find this question of battle really funny. When we were younger, we use to lord over other children how old we were because it made us superior. Even if it was by a couple hours or a couple of days, being older somehow made you superior and we relished in it. Through the eyes of a child this is the ultimate height of cool. I am older and you are still the young one because our parents were constantly reminding us that because they are the older ones they make the rules ergo we make the rules because we were older.
Then came pre-teen and its every changing hormones where time seemed to be going by with the speed of the last bit of molasses traveling down a bottle. Each minute of each hour felt like an eternity with no end. And it traveled by so jammed packed with "drama" and ultimatums. Tears and elation in the same 60 second span. It had the ability to just drag on by or zip faster than a fly getting sucked into a fan. Hormones, you had to love that rush of first love and first hate. Jealousies and competition. Betrayals and Revenges. All the plots to pass time seem like something straight of a movie and meticulously executed so as to have something to talk about.
And then you graduate high school and time seems to stand still. Because for the last 12 years of your life you had to adhere to a schedule of learning and instruction and now the time is yours to do with as you wish just as you've always dreamed and you find out that its not all it was cracked up to be. It was easier to be in school wishing to be out because at least you had something to look forward too... Now you have to figure it out on your own and no one is giving you an instruction on how to do that. Some people step up to the challenge to carve out their own "idea" on how to get it some falter under the immense responsibility. some fall right in the middle.
Hi, I'm one of those lost in the crowd right in the middle.
Each milestone of life seems to bring a new set of questions.
At fifteen, you can't wait to be 18; a legal adult in the US. I can buy cigarettes now, I can vote, my voice and opinion is said to matter at 18 because I am no longer legally deemed a child... but that doesn't mean that my mind still isn't childish.
At eighteen, you feel the weight of this imposed "adultness" but milk it for all its worth... until you find the repercussions of it. Your also waiting for 21, because if being 18 was the height of cool with its cigarettes and its voting, at least at 21 you were legally able to drink. And even though you were doing it anyway, you could at least buy your own drink without having to rely on the someone else.
At 21, you don't really think much about life but the moment. Everyday is lived in the moment and there are many moments as the hormones that started at 13 are still as rampant at this age as they were when they first started, if only a little subdued but not a noticeable amount.
Its not until you reach 25 when that haze leaves you and you wonder 'how the fuck did I get here and did I invest my time wisely?', 'was I taught to invest my time wisely?' and 'what did the first 5 years of my twentys teach me?', if they taught me anything at all. the only thing to look forward too at 25 is the ability to rent cars in the states. But you also realize something at 25, that the time that seemed to lag in your teens and early 20s has started to pick up speed. And suddenly its no longer "cool" to be older, you find yourself yearning for the days when the minutes dragged by and the most important decision you had to make the whole day was what to have for lunch and who are you crushing on at the moment and did i finish my homework for Science class. Now its all about your bills and credit score and savings account and traveling and finding love and losing love and making sense of this mixed up matched up world. Run on sentences and cloudy nights of heavy petting.
25 turns to 26 in a blink of an eye. And eventually you are 29 years old wondering how the fuck is in 2011 when my heart and my mind is still in 2008.
Its 342 days till i turn 30 and I am trying to figure out if I am okay with my life lessons so far or if I'm bitter about the choices I made consciously and unconsciously. Have i truly loved and let myself be loved or have I been hiding behind the veil. Have I lived my life or let life be lived as a bystander instead of the driver. 30 is a big deal. 30 life was suppose to make sense and children are involved a marriage a happy career and I'm looking at the 525600 minutes counting down to my 30th birthday and screaming my head into the abyss that the clock of life has never tick-tocked so loudly in my life.
Age is a number that means different things to different people. To me, its a milestone I for one thought I wasn't going to reach, and now I am finding out I am not prepared to reach. Mentally, physically emotionally.
Tick Tock goes the clock and I am screaming in terror.
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