Where Have We Gone From 18?

A lot of young people around me have turned eighteen this year, myself included. You might have known some who feared their eighteenth birthdays, because it would mean their becoming an adult all of a sudden against their will, which automatically endowed them with responsibilities they had been partly taught to shoulder. An acquaintance of mine is turning eighteen next year, and she will immediately be in charge of managing all legal papers made in her name to fight for an equitable distribution of the family property. Disillusioned friends of mine want to believe that they still qualify as seventeen and three quarters - at the most.

I expected a metamorphosis to take hold of me on the stroke of my eighteenth birthday. Nothing the like happened, of course: except for a nagging reminder both internally and externally that I ought to behave and maintain my gravitas as a young lady. Now I am not to be spared so easily, now I must be conscious at all times of the potential missteps one tends to be so vulnerable to - with a tempered grace of good breeding, nonetheless. I consider myself lucky, and unlucky, compared to my acquaintance. She is preparing herself to struggle against a formidable opponent, while I imponderably struggle against more inconsequential despondencies. I sometimes feel that I have always had no point to prove myself upon the fact that I am now a recognized adult. You could say that it's because of my sheltered upbringing - not that that's deteriorating. My parents have always trusted in varying priorities for me, determining on their conditional basis as to what age level certain life-incidents are appropriate: demonstratively speaking; until one is twenty-five, one is not to engage in overtly committed relationships.

Or it might have been because the effect isn't so quick as I would like it to be. It's slow, this process of coming to understand the depth of your age to fully connect yourself with it. I've been eighteen for only eleven days - rose-colored perceptions of becoming official will need more than my age to prove it. Perhaps, one's means of redemption are different.

We know that life is born to be short. It isn't uncommon how people go to their graves with music still inside them. This - for some inexplicable reason - does not make me question my mortality as much a it induces me to feel that I'm already quite old in the eyes of the world. I don't feel any different, but it's as if youth is fading away beyond all knowledge. And what are the extents of "being young" anyway? Age must be more than a mere number; since one's body is aware of it than one might be. I could complain and say that my age is gradated by the law: I'm old enough to vote but not quite there yet as to enable me to drink or get married. Of course.

Expectancies related to our age seems to govern the age of how our minds are supposed to work. I've seen people die before their time. It's no better than the death of those who were beyond their time. What good is that belief for, then? Is it this natural uncertainty to the process of growing old that makes one so paranoid as to never having lived at all?

I, at least, have no clue.

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