One of the things about travel, the type that involves extended periods in any one place, is that I've noticed how it makes me reflect on time--or, more specifically, the fleeting nature of it. When you only have so long in one place to get to know and understand it, and then as soon as it comes it's gone, you can't help but feel a little dazed when you look back.
I guess there's been several things more or less prompting me to be a little more sensitive to the subject lately: returning from India, packing up my stuff to move yet again, looking back on old notebooks and drawings, and (I'm a bit embarrassed to admit) reading some well-written and rather deep fanfiction. It's been a minor onslaught of things that has made me face the temporal nature of aging in a way I haven't in a while. Freaking out about it used to be kind of a hobby of mine, but I had almost come to terms with it.
But still, the question remains: when do we stop being kids? Everyone makes it sound like one day you'll just be grown up, or you'll just sort of be an adult, but that's never how it really is, is it? It's more like you a rocky forward stumble, meeting new people and having experiences and jumping from one birthday to another without really realizing things are changing, and then all of a sudden you look back, and you're not sixteen anymore, and those five years went by without ever really being there in the first place--a split second of time that should have been something significant. When I was younger, throughout middle school and some of high school, I remember struggling with that--with how fast I was growing up and with the basic concept of permanence, with how once a moment passed you could never get it again...but they're always passing. I would spend weeks at a time feel like I was just slipping, and I couldn't quite place who I was at any given moment, and I was afraid of what I knew I would one day have to leave behind.
I mostly came to terms with that, I suppose, but part of me suspects I just became too busy and involved to waste energy on that anymore. Another part of me, though, always kind of whispers in the back of my head: what are you doing with your time? Because, you know, you don't exactly have an infinite amount.
I guess one of the reasons I struggle with it now is that I didn't really feel quite like a kid when I was one--I was told I was more mature than others, and I felt that way too. I was more self-reflective (which stemmed from the fact that I had--have--this horrible dissonance between my mind self and my real self, I think). Now that I'm older, I'm a little surprised because I don't feel quite like an adult now either, compared to my perceived consensus on what an adult should feel like, I guess. I'm an animation major--I watch cartoons and play videogames and am allowed, even encouraged, to cultivate a wonder and passion for something fundamentally more amazing than our own world. I take my responsibilities seriously and try to be mature and steadfast in all things, but I don't feel "tainted" by real world problems, either.
I almost feel like fundamentally, at my core, I was never really one or the other. Like somehow there's this weird duality where even as I grow, I am not really defined by my age or my youth, that I am both a child and an adult and always will be. I forget how old I am sometimes, completely blank, and when I realize that I'm still getting older, it's strange and kind of disconcerting because I don't really feel any different at all. Just sort of busier, or involved in different things and people, and, most notably, lacking some of the moments that have became distant memories, scents or sounds or motions that once frequented my senses. You hear a song and then suddenly you're fourteen, and all the years in between flashed by in a second, like you were going nice and slow and then you were suddenly running at warp speed, and you're dropping little pieces of yourself but can only look back and realize you'll never get the chance to pick them up again, and you're not really sure if that's ever going to change. Will this still move me to tears when I'm 50? Will I ever really be "grown up?"
It's not that easy, I guess. I wonder how many other people struggle with this. It's not easy to verbalize, so maybe it's just something that no one talks about (which, frankly, tends to be most things anyway). Anyway, now that I got that off my chest, maybe I won't wake up at 6 in the morning thinking about it, at least for a while.
Also, I'll get a post-India blog post up sometime. I've been a little swamped with the house and pre-school garbage. But, that's life, I guess.
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