Coming to college, there were a million things I was thinking about. How I wanted my dorm to look, the clubs I wanted to join, the people I wanted to meet, even scary things, like living without my parents and paying off loans by myself.
The one thing I really didn’t put any thought to is the fact that college is just another step in my path of the inescapable act of aging.
Despite having turned 19 in January of this year, I had not deeply thought about the fact that I am really aging until these past few weeks, one moment in particular triggering this. No, I didn’t find a grey hair, didn’t notice new stress lines on my face, didn’t even get existentially spiraled by the discussion about death in my Honors class. I made slime.
I suddenly got this strong desire to make slime and even made it three times in one week. It was then that I started to realize my “childish” tendencies in recent times.
I realized that in the heat of my busy schedule and typical spring semester stressors, I unconsciously resorted to things that don’t always feel very adult to me.
My slime creations, my uptick in Roblox gameplay hours, the sudden urge to start conversations about what everyones favorite things to do when they were bored as kids were and even going to the playground on a sunny day once, are the staples of my current livelihood.
Wrist deep in shaving cream and glue was definitely not the setting I pictured myself to be in when I got this sudden realization of the fact that I was an adult. Of course I already knew I was, I just never really dedicated any thought to it… ignorance is bliss I guess.
It has since become apparent to me that the older I get, the more attached to my childhood I become and subsequently begin to find more joy in ridiculously childish activities.
As an innocent little girl, I always figured that when I got to be the age I am now, I was gonna feel so old. I think she would laugh at me if she was magically granted a glimpse of 19-year-old Audney and then had to watch as her future self was putting her all into a fashion show on Roblox at 1 in the morning.
After fighting the gut-wrenching nostalgia and great feelings of discomfort this whole recent experience has brought me, I realized I could only really take away one statement from it all, and that is simply that aging is so weird.
One minute you’re having some sort of first that you always dreamed of as a child, and the next you are literally acting like a child while playing the game you played for the first time in the fourth grade or trying to get someone to push you on the swing set.
I guess the biggest message I draw from this is that aging is not the linear process that is often displayed in our world. One day at 19 you’re gonna feel 10, and the next you could feel 35, and that is okay.
Never stop yourself from doing something you find joy in because you think it is not fit for the magic number assigned to you that is so heavily weighted in society sometimes.
Aging is weird, but it also is very difficult. Sometimes the only thing we need is to hug our mom like a toddler again or pull out that neglected craft glue from the once highly esteemed middle school slime phase. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks you are supposed to be doing.
It’s hard never being a child again. It’s exciting never being a child again. You don’t have to fit into a certain singular feeling and stick with it. Aging can be so many things all at once.
Here’s to more aging, even though it really can be the weirdest thing.