I feel like I’m older from the way I look. Sometimes I think I can feel it when my cells are changing, when my skin is peeling away, when my body is getting rounder with the pounds I am gaining.
I feel like I’m older from the way I strive from day to day. I no longer have the energy to stay up all night and wake up early in the morning. I can’t remember the last time I attempted at a winged eyeliner because of how I would rush every day to work. I don’t even like wearing makeup during the weekends. I get dragged by the slow and torturous flow of traffic, wasting my time and strength to get from one place to another. I spend most of my food stress eating.
I feel like I’m older from the way I have to understand people. Younger or older than me, I have to adjust for their expense. Mostly because it’s my obligation to do so, but because I don’t want anymore conflicts to resound. I know they’ll always think they’re right, that I’ll never win. Millennials are such troubled people, they say. I carry the weight of the people and the world on my shoulders even if I don’t have to, because the rest are happy in their ignorant bliss. I have come to the realization to just simply accept that.
I feel like I’m older from the way I see things. Every other sunset looks different, but beautiful all the same. Every other person’s flaws, including mine, looks hideous in our own eyes. Every other movie, every other song, and every other television show is not just a simple filler of silence, or feeder of eyes, but a window through what I perceive to be worth my time and emotions.
I feel like I’m older from the way I want something. Some people dream to be rich, powerful, smart, beautiful. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I go day to day, grinding myself, and yet only having a simple dream: to be a happy stay at home mom. It’s such a contrary from the ultimate working girl reputation I’ve got going on, with my ivory tower and closed guard. Eventually these lavishes gets so tiring that you just want the simple things so life doesn’t get so complicated.
I feel like I’m older, but like ten times more or ten times less. I’ll always want to be someone who is wise beyond my years, but still have that childlike wonder. To see the world as if it was the first but look at it deeply than others. To grow old but not grow up. Like an age limbo where I can be anything and everything.
When I hear how people my age are striving to be so many things, at first it saddens me, but then it resonates. It’s not because they’re lost and have no idea who they are, it is because they can be so many things in so many ways that the world cannot pigeonhole them into a single person when in fact, those fragments build up to what and who exactly they are.
Twenty four doesn’t sound promising, but it’s not so bad.
Airah Writes 