Nearly 20 years old

October 9th, 2008 by Mike | Posted in blog, rant |

It’s that time of the year again when the leaves start to change and all that other cliché stuff starts to happen, but what also occurs this time of year is my birthday.

I realized that come next Tuesday I’ll be 20 years old. 2 decades. Yes, I know people always say “wow I’m old” but I don’t feel old. Should I feel old? I know people in my age bracket who are stressed about being 19 or being 21 and I can’t help but say, “You’re only [insert age] and you’re worrying about being old?” When the hell did being around 19-24 become an issue? I thought you were supposed to be happy that you were so young. 

All I’m saying is that I’m glad to only be 20. It’s kind of a cool feeling now. I mean, sure I am young compared to many of my friends (most of them are 20-21 by now), but now for the first time in my life I am able to just look at freshmen coming into college or seniors graduating and say “Yea, been there. It sucked and it’s only going to get harder.” It’s a great feeling.

I guess I’m coming out of this whole “I own the world!” phase of being a teenager now and am seeing a bigger picture and blah blah blah. It’s not like I’m going to join some cause or become part of a cult (do comic books count?) because I am still a liberal cynic at heart–so cynical I can’t even get into movies sometimes–but it’s like, I see the world as the world now and not so much as just whatever is in driving distance. I’m sure it’s some part of “growing up” that anyone who is older than 20ish will come and say “Yea, been there. It sucked and it’s only going to get harder,” and I’m fine with that.

It’s just a good-weird feeling I have now being so close to being 20. 

To somewhat add to this whole “feeling” I am having, I was coming upstairs from my room after a nap today and had a mini-panic attack. I was thinking of how on bad days I work at a bare minimum just to get by and how in a worse-case scenario I would lose both of my jobs for some reason or another. Then sets in the “holy shit, I owe so much money in student loans” feeling. Then the, “holy fuck balls, I owe my parents my own weight in hundreds for raising me, how am I going to ever pay them back after paying for my student loans?” … it’s not fun. But as I said, this was a mini-panic attack, and those only come up randomly. 

Now, when something like that mini-panic attack hits me, I later start to think of how I’ll manage to pass all my classes and how I would have NO FUCKING CLUE of what to do if I didn’t get through college and get a degree. Pile on top of my relationship and how I would have no idea where that would go if I couldn’t find a job that paid well enough to pay back my loans and my parents and whatever debts I have. It turns into another mini-panic attack.

So, I guess what it comes down to is me being afraid of being a full-on adult. I mean, I know everyone gets scared of the unknown (some much more than others) at some point but I wonder sometimes if people have back up plans for their life. Like, for me, if I failed out of school I don’t know what I’d do. I’d seriously be fucked beyond reason. Or if I lost one or both of my jobs, I don’t know what I’d do. It scares me. I guess that is normal though, right? I mean, being a student my grades depend on me, so if I work hard I will/should do good in school. As for my jobs… it all depends. It’s the working world. You may get fired for doing shotty work, or for being lazy or for doing your job incorrectly or for being disliked (though, your employer would never say that). Thank whatever for the kindness of people when it comes to that though. 

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a lot of things in life as if they are hanging by the brim. It could be my irrational fear of whatever, but from where I sit and from what I know, I don’t see much security in a lot of things. I trust Google with my e-mail because I just do, but how do I know that some joe working at Google is having a bad day, does a bare minimum job and because of that someone can exploit some flaw in the GMail log-in system and get into my e-mail? I guess I don’t, and it’s my half-faith in humanity that reassures me that all is well. Yes I said half-faith… that’s for another time though.

So ranting aside, my birthday is coming up and I’m pretty excited. I’ll try to update and let whoever reads know how things went and how it feels to be 20. 

–ending note, I hate how I defend myself before being attacked when I write sometime…