24.

So, in a few hours, I will be turning 24 - or well, actually I was born around noon, so I guess I have about half a day left. I suppose that means that I am no longer in my early twenties now, or that at the very least I'm getting perilously close to being in my mid-twenties. This is a scary thing to me, though I'm not sure why. I had no real issues turning 18 or 21, like some people do. All in all, I loved being 18, and being 21 was fun, too, even though, of course, in my country, it does not really come with any particular benefits. But it was a fun age and I liked turning it, and the same goes for 22 and 23.


I think twenty-four is a little strange because it's an age at which people get married and have children. They also have jobs and do adult things. Yes, rationally I know that doesn't make any sense. On the one hand, I know people who were already married or had children by the time they were my age, and at the same time I also know many people my age who are still in school, who are not having babies just yet, who are unmarried. And both are fine things and neither is particularly connected with any particular age. And I also know, rationally, that 24 is really not very old, which I realized as I was talking to a good friend of mine who is in her late sixties (and awesome). So I am, all in all, pretty sure my hair won't turn white overnight. Though as I pointed out to Cammie, it would make dying my hair significantly easier...

I just feel like the adult switch has yet to flip for me, and I am starting to wonder if it really does for anyone. Maybe when it comes down to it, none of us really feel like adults from one moment to the next - I think I'm just at that stage, call it a quarter-life-crisis or something else, where I am starting to realize that that magical moment isn't coming. Maybe all these people I've looked up to as Having Their Shit Together really haven't been all that different from me, after all. Maybe we all kind of wander from childhood into adolescence into college age into semi-adulthood blindly and without ever knowing what the right thing to do was before we do it.

To the world, I probably look fairly grown-up. I have finished a BA and an MA. I'm in grad school. I teach sixty undergraduates. I earn money for doing so. And even though it isn't a particularly great salary, I do at least pay the greater part of my rent and expenses. I have lived in two foreign countries, away from my family and childhood friends. And although I've done many things wrong, I hope I've done a couple of things right.

But the future is still as scary as it is exciting, and maybe that won't ever change.