All Grown Up? Doesn't Feel Real!

[Voice in my head: You’ve turned 18, Yusra. You’re a grown up now! Can you believe it?

Heart (in an outburst): But I don’t feel like an adult at all! 

Voice in my head: Maybe that’s because, ‘Dil toh bachcha hai ji’. (chuckles)

Brain (in disbelief): What is wrong with the two of you?]

 

Sans the utterly lame PJ, that’s exactly how I feel at 18 years, 5 months, 17 days (Yes, I counted.) down the lane of my life. Even though my age says otherwise, I don’t feel like a grown-up at all. Or perhaps I’ve been wrong all these years in picturing what a grown up should be like. Whatever the case maybe, I do very poorly in living up to the image of a grown-up that I’ve always had in mind.

I remember it so starkly, when I was 13 and my elder sister had just passed out of school, 18 was an age that I looked up to with wonder.  I was fascinated by the idea of being that old. Little did my 13-year old self know that there is nothing like a grown up.

 Isn’t it too giant a leap from an age group that is considered immature to the number 18, which calls for a young responsible adult? I actually find it funny that till a year ago I was just another regular kid who went to school, did homework, would go to play in the evening, and waste all my time watching something or the other on TV/internet till the time I’d get so fed up that I’d complain to my mother about how bored to death I was and she’d give me a super annoyed expression of ‘you’re-good-for-nothing’ and walk out of the room without even giving me a second thought. And suddenly now I am classified as an adult who’s supposed to be everything a kid is not even though I’m still the EXACT same person I was a year back. The exact same intelligent girl(read: idiot) I was before. Haha.

 I think this age happens to be a label that has absolutely no bearing on us whatsoever. I’m beginning to really think on the lines of how age is just a number. Cause I sure as hell don’t feel like a grown-up at all. I think that line which is thrown around every now and then is very true. There is always a kid inside us. 

It’s a good thing, you know. This is a happy realisation. ☺