feeling old and young

I've been feeling really weird lately about something extremely typical and, dare I say, cliché.

I feel old.

I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. It all started when I saw a young couple walking along the side of the road. They looked like they were maybe 16 or 17 and were obviously in some sort of very new and sparklingly wonderful relationship. Cue my next cliché statement "ah, young love." Anyways they were so young and so happy, kind of tentatively touching each other in a careless but still very calculated way. All this young, happy love predictably depressed me- because it feels like just yesterday that I was 16, shiny and new.

Not to say that I'm unhappy- I'm not really. I'm about as moderately happy as a person who lives a solitary life can be. And it's not going to be solitary forever so I can deal with that. But just seven years ago I was 16, and in another 7 years I'll be 30.

I can remember my whole life feeling like I was going down a path that was directly in front of me, and for so long my goal was to get to high school. And then I got to high school and my goal was to do well and set myself up for a good college, and I was so wrapped up in this goal that I didn't notice my life progress, I didn't notice my body grow and change, I didn't notice my mind shift inside my own head. And then one day I was graduating high school and at that point me and my friends all exclaimed how old we were getting- but we didn't really believe it. We exclaimed about our age but at the same time we knew we were still very young.

And so I feel old but still very young. My path that was laid out for me has come to an end and now I'm the one that has to figure out where the hell I'm going. In this way I feel old- I don't particularly like the responsibility of figuring this out alone. At the same time I recognize I can do pretty much whatever I want (except maybe firefighting. Not that I want to do that... but seriously that's not ever happening) and I am still young enough to really shake things up if I want. Like I could move to Sri Lanka and fight child marriage if I wanted. I could get a PhD in Soviet film if I wanted. I could get married, move to a farm and have 15 kids if I wanted.

But everytime I think about going back to school I can't help but frame it with my age. "By the time I finished that program I'd be 27... By the time I finished and started my residency I'd be 28...."

I guess at the heart of it I want to really live up my 20's and am scared to lose track of my own life and my own aging. I don't want to wake up one day and realize I'm 30 and not know what I was doing.

Well that turned out more ramble-y than I intended.

For the video of the day: my true future self