Do you feel younger or older than you really are?

Interesting question. I feel both and neither. I have packed more than the required life experience into my short little life span than most, but the same was true when I was only eighteen years old. I got more life experience in that one year than some people do in a whole lifetime. When I think about how long I’ve been alive and how many years of that life I’ve been forced to be an adult, it makes me very tired. When I think about all the things I’ve done, all the places I’ve been and all the jobs, boyfriends, cars, apartments, etc. I’ve had, I feel ancient, like I’m ninety years old.

On the other hand, I will always be 25 in my mind. Even when I wasn’t 25 yet, I was 25. I’ve always seemed older than my peers. When I was fifteen, people thought I was twenty. When I was twenty, they thought I was 25 and so on. When I actually was 25, that flipped so that now people think I look five years younger than I am. I stopped aging five years in advance.

In some ways, my age fits me and in other ways, it doesn’t. Regardless of whether I feel 25 or 90, time progresses in a linear fashion anyhow. That’s what it does. Time, gravity and the ravages of both take a toll on my delicate, organic body. Eventually, I will actually be that ninety year old that I feel like sometimes, if I’m lucky enough to live that long. I will never be 25 again, but I still carry it with me inside, along with all the experiences, both good and bad, that I’ve collected along the way. The best that we humans can hope for is a lot of those 365 day cycles that age us even more. I hope I have many of them yet to come, even if they do completely exhaust me and wear out my poor little heart in the end. There’s no point in being here if you don’t plan on living.