Getting ooooold...

[Tabouli]

Laura:
> Considering how depressing birthdays are at 19, I don't think I'll 
be able to take it at 30 or 40.  Am I too old for a nice comfy 
treehouse in Neverland?<

Hey, if it's any comfort, I was even more precocious in the OMG, I'm getting ooooold department... I started agonising at *15*.  Yes, laugh if you like, but I had convinced myself that 15 was the beginning of the end.  My 15th birthday was a dark day, one that symbolised the sunset of childhood and all its freshness and life and creativity and magic, the first step on the long downward road to the grave...

...my friends had no patience with me either.  Oh for God's *sake* was their general opinion.  I blame Trophy Child Syndrome, myself.  I'd been led to believe I was meant to be a Child Prodigy, with my Name Up In Lights, and (again, laugh if you will, but) I felt that reaching 15 without having published a book, won any significant prizes or made any significant achievements made me a failure.  15 years old, and what have I achieved that means anything?  Nothing!

O dear.

Fortunately, I grew out of this.  I did have OMG, I'm starting to *AGE* crises in my twenties (had plenty of those... much scrutinising my face in mirrors at different angles and under different lights and tracking the progress of wrinkles), but strangely enough, once I'd pulled off a lifestyle I really loved, my aging crises just faded away.  Considering how distressing I found 15, I weathered the far scarier 30 pretty well, because by then I was actually happy with where my life was.  And now, after 2 and a half years of my amenable lifestyle, I feel younger than I did at 28.  I think I even look younger - nearly imploded with horror when someone estimated my age on my 30s at 28 (when I was working in a full-time, stressful job and was very miserable due to family dramas).  These days no-one's put me above 27 or 28 for a year or two.  I'm now a decrepit 31 (winces), but fully intend to remain spiritually in my 20s for as long as I can manage.  So there.

Take heart, Laura!

Tabouli.



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