Skip to main content

Eighteen

As my '18' balloons slowly wilt closer and closer to the ground and I ruefully sip my fresh orange juice and promise my body that tomorrow will be without alcoholic beverage it is finally dawning on me that I'm all adult and stuff.

I realise that the previous end to that sentence indicates otherwise but yes, I am a legal adult. I can vote and I can buy alcohol and I can finally socialise with friends on an evening without fearing for me life- I mean fearing getting kicked out. I guess I somehow thought that a miraculous thing would happen upon me turning eighteen... I'd be able to cope with things better and I'd not be scared witless about working full time for two weeks and I'd basically conquer the world.

I do feel more grown up. I have met up with a friend in a pub and discussed literature and people and to top it all off I've worked my first slightly hungover shift very competently. All in all, I do feel more ready to conquer the world. Alas there is the whole 'change' thing going on at the moment and that is entirely crap but wonderful at the same time. There are people I'm going to be saying goodbye to that I don't want to say goodbye to and my mind, being the complete puzzle that it is, is going a bit mental with it all but a lovely friend reminded me gingerly that it is not the end of relationships. Moving across the country does not mean it's the end of a friendship, just as swapping an seven for an eight on your age doesn't automatically make you world-conqueror-ready.

These past two years I've started drinking a hell of a lot more coffee (I blame Michael and Gilmore Girls entirely for that one), I've changed what I read and fallen in love with studying English Literature, I've been enticed by philosophers and writers that I couldn't have dreamed of even going near, I've learnt to appreciate friends more and I'm currently trying to work out how I work as a person. It's sound entirely and utterly and comepletely cliche and I feel stupid saying all of that but it's mind blowing how much has changed these past two years but yet how little.

Time is something we apply to things, it's part of being human - recording and accounting for time. Yet it's so wibbly-wobbly that we cannot really make sense of it. Changing the number which you call your age doesn't change much, just like time moving on doesn't effect relationships and people that much and by realising that things can stay the same and change at the same time we, weirdly, can realise that things can work out okay.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Teens don't read"

Earlier today Maureen Johnson pointed out that the view of "teens don't read" in the UK is deeply entrenched (which is a word that I now love  and had never heard before). As a teenager in the UK, the stigma around reading seems to be - to me - it's "uncool", it's "geeky", there "aren't any good books out there". I think the fact that a lot of teenagers in British schools are exposed to older literature or, perhaps, not that popular literature in lessons and forced into over-analysing and spending countless hours on 'what the author meant'. A point that was raised in this twitter discussion was that people didn't want to be seen reading, or didn't want to be seen reading certain books. It's made me realise that I never   ever ever  see people reading in the older years in my school ( ever ). Perhaps the odd year 7 (12 year old) or year 8 (13 year old) will read, but - from experience - they will probably be ...

The people I have met through ink

I read somewhere once that one of the reasons books are so great is that one can pick them up a second time and feel how you did, or remember where you were the first time you picked it up and opened it. I stand by this idea as to one of the reasons I love reading so much. I am perusing the wonderful words of Ali Smith's The Accidental for my level 1 module 'Introduction to Narrative' and whilst this module is all very technical (and trust me, I do love that!) I am really enjoying reading a novel where the characterisation leaves a bitter sweet taste in my mouth and when I close my eyes all I can see is Amber; how she looks, how she dresses, how she smells... I love that. I love that I can read 200 pages or so of one novel and suddenly there is this person inside of my head and I can't get her out. Not so long ago I read R. J. Anderson's Nomad (the second in the Swift series) and I was brought back to why I adore fantasy so much. I felt like I wanted to fly, and...

Ask FML

Ask FM infuriates me. I'm not going to take a moral high-ground and say I've never asked a question on it, because that would be lying but it still makes me angry. (Note that you can in fact dislike something that you have partaken in previously...) I can understand the appeal to both asking and answering questions - yeah, it can get some good conversation going. What I don't understand is that those two people could have that perfectly civilised conversation about all those deep and meaningful questions without the anonymity. Furthermore, why does someone immediately think "oh, I'm bored I KNOW let's post a link to ask.fm on my facebook/twitter page"? If you're bored go and do talk to people (text, phone, family, skype DO IT), read a book, make a video, write a blog post. Why ask people ask you questions? I just... I guess I don't get it. I have seen people horrendously bullied on formspring and ask fm and yet they continue to allow themselv...