3:27pm June 30, 2014

I’m going to be 18 in two weeks and this is terrifying.

youneedacat:

girllock:

I am not ready to be an adult yet. I mean, I am, but I’m not. I’m 17 and I just barely started figuring out how to be a kid. I never played, I didn’t even crawl. I’ve been 40 since I was 2.

For the first time in my life, I have real friends. We play at the park, we watch movies, we go out and have fun. I played tag for the first time in ten years with them.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. I have a great job, I’ve traveled the world, my entire life is set and organized with a thousand backup plans and possibilities. Everything is set and organized and all grown up. I’ve traveled more and done more than a lot of adults I know. My life thus far has been a race to do as much as I can, and to prove that I’m not “just a kid.” Nothing would have been worse than being told I was just a kid.

I was part of the “rebelution,” and all those other great sounding movement encouraging kids and teens to grow up and take responsibility and prove that we should be treated like adults.

It’s payed off, I guess. I’m constantly told how great everything I’ve done is, and people are stunned when I tell them my age, and floored when I say I’m autistic. (Seriously, what is with that?) But it came with a price. Everyone was so intent on helping me grow up that I don’t think anyone, especially me, realized that I was never “little.” I was never a kid in some of those precious ways. I have a great imagination to this day, but it’s not the same thing. I was so concerned with being “proper” that kids books never happened, Disney princesses didn’t happen, and even playing house made my first priority into “mom mode.” Watching my brothers and sisters play, and listening to kids I babysit, and even seeing other teenagers at the mall, I can’t help but think I missed out on something big that I can’t make up anymore.

Can’t I have a little while longer to learn to be a kid?

I know what you’re dealing with is serious but — turning 18 doesn’t magically change you into something you weren’t before. In fact, becoming an adult can give you the freedom to do a lot of “kid things” that you might not have had the chance to do before. There’s no rule saying you can’t do those things, at any age you want to do them.

What Mel said.

I’m nearly 38 and I do a lot of adult stuff. I’m married, we have pets, I try to look after the house, I work from home, etc.

But I read kids’ books and YA books and I like to colour and do arts and crafts of the kid kind (rather than the adult kind). I like watching kids’ shows on TV. I swear half the reason the kids I babysit like me so much is that I AM a child… I’m just three times their size (depending on the kid, of course). I play hide and go seek, I read stories and do puzzles, I play with toys, I play board games, I get just as into their movies as I ever have the ones that are supposedly “age appropriate.”

Being an adult actually makes that all a lot easier to enjoy, because nobody is telling me to act my age anymore (by which they actually meant I should act older than I was).

Age is just a number. It doesn’t magically change who you are. Go forth and be who you are, unapologetically. As long as you aren’t hurting anyone else (or yourself), of course. :)