I turned 21 a couple months ago.<\/p>\n
Was I excited? Sure. But it quickly subsided into a kind of ho-hum feeling, not negative, just indifferent.<\/p>\n
Up until that point, I felt perpetually 17. Prior to 17, I think I always felt myself so old, so mature. After 17, I felt enormously incapable of being deemed \u201can adult.\u201d I was repulsed by any \u201cadult\u201d activity and, upon encountering any such activities (traffic, filling out forms, etc.), would just mutter, \u201cGod, I hate<\/em> being an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n These feelings only grew in size last year when I turned 20, but instead of repulsion, they turned to panic. Two decades of my life, done. Like that. How fast would the next two decades pass? In despair, I remember donning my favorite pair of socks that say \u201cDang it all to heck,\u201d slipping on my Asics, and tearing out the door on my 20th birthday. I then proceeded to run 5 miles, crying, while listening to Bad Suns\u2019 \u201c20 Years,\u201d among their numerous existential songs. Not a shining moment.<\/p>\n Since that angsty run, I seemed to come to terms with being 20, but I didn\u2019t stop bitching about being an adult and I was encountering irritating adult inconveniences more and more frequently. At some point, someone said to me, with exasperation, \u201cYou know, you really need to get over this fear<\/i> of being an adult.\u201d<\/p>\n I sat in silence. It wasn\u2019t that I was afraid<\/i> of being an adult. I just found the whole thing tedious. Annoying. That somehow, I didn\u2019t deserve it, that I was still 17, for God\u2019s sake, too young to handle it all.<\/p>\n And now I\u2019m 21, and I feel utterly ageless. I was recently in Cuba, visiting my host family and friends from my study abroad there. My host grandparents, Angelita and Silvino, couldn\u2019t stop remarking how young I was. They kept referring to me as the jovencita, the young little girl. At one point, I decided to get a pedicure in Old Havana. The tiny shop was empty, but for the two young Cuban women running it. We gabbed in Spanish about inane things, and they too couldn\u2019t believe how young I was. At age 28 and 29, they both had done so much more than I had, had endured far more hardships than I could imagine.<\/p>\n It was at that point that I quite possibly felt exactly like my age. Like I was 21 and had seen what a 21 year old has seen, but that I had so much more ahead of me. Then again, I felt like I had no age at all. I realized that I am capable of handling myself, but beyond that, I\u2019m not sure. I don\u2019t feel too young to deal with things, nor do I feel competent to do it all myself.<\/p>\n For now, I\u2019ve decided that age in general just bores me. Beyond 21, numbers are no real concern. So I\u2019ll carry on, and most likely, I\u2019ll continue to mutter that I hate being an adult. But it won\u2019t be out of feeling too young to be an adult; it\u2019ll be out of the fact that being an adult, sometimes, frankly sucks. No matter your age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I turned 21 a couple months ago. Was I excited? Sure. But it quickly subsided into a kind of ho-hum feeling, not negative, just indifferent. Up until that point, I felt perpetually 17. Prior to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ponderings"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}