Do you know what it means to be old? To hit a point where you look at the people around you and realize that you’ve passed them by in life. As young men and women, it happens fairly often as one becomes more mature. But not in the way of a collegiate suddenly finding themselves at a disconnect with high school brats.
When I say I feel old, I mean to say that my life experience puts me beyond my own age bracket. It’s the way of looking at my little brother – so sweet, so innocent and caring and kind and all of ten years my junior – and thinking on how at his age I was already being thrown headfirst into the adult world, and how little of what he is I had left already. It’s how I look at people my age and realize I like their company because their silliness or exuberance for life is something I miss – something of younger people, and for those lucky, the august and lived. I’m still stuck in the middle where life shoves itself at me.
I feel old. I’ve felt old for five years, and am selfishly happy for any who became able of really understanding me. Five years I’ve been aware of how I don’t fit in. Five years I’ve watched and listened and came to be the hidden gossip monger, the consultant, secretary – the secret keeper. Five years and each one I got further and further away – because as everyone else grew, I did too. I simply got older.
I feel old because I’ve felt the weight of the real world. I’m old because life took me by the wrist and dragged me along through shadows and back alleys, then left me on the other side back in the light as if nothing had happened. But who sees the monsters in the dark and forgets their faces? They all have faces to me – all the shadows, and all the monsters in the dark.
But do you know what really makes me old? I don’t see the faces just in the dark. They walk around in plain sight, for everyone to see – and who’s really seen the faces in the dark to know some of them hide in the light too?
So yes, I will have my put upon sigh. I will look at you give you a look because I think you’re abusing the folly of youth. I will rage and yell and destroy what connection we had – we were never equals anyway. I will treat you like the child you are.
I’ve lived much already, and I shall live more still. But I also have a appreciation for the finer things in life, and as young as my age is, I consider it a precious perspective.
