i'm still here
on growing up and still feeling like a child
As I was watching the recent episode of the k-drama ‘Twenty Five Twenty One’, there was a quote that hit way too close to home for me and something that I kept thinking about after watching the episode.
“Mom, I still feel like I’m 13,” Na Heedo said, talking about how she felt stuck at the age when her father passed away, but her mother couldn’t come to the funeral because she had to deliver a news flash.
I still feel like I’m 13 years old too.
Although my body has grown and I’m already an adult now, often I still feel like the 13-year-old girl that I used to be. The 13-year-old girl who lost the one thing she never thought she would.
It’s been almost seven years now since I turned thirteen, and yet I feel like I’ve never really grown up and I’m still that 13-year-old girl who had felt so lost and so alone. I still feel like a child who doesn’t know anything—nothing but the sadness that kept me company as I was growing up and realising that things won’t be the same anymore. I was growing apart from my childhood friends and my family had fallen apart. I didn’t have any friends at school and there was always this empty feeling that kept chewing at my heart until there was nothing to chew on anymore.
I was so lonely. I’m still so lonely. Still lost. Still afraid.
Still stuck at the age where my whole life fell apart and everything I thought I knew started to feel strange and unfamiliar. That the things I thought would last forever would soon come to an end, because there is nothing in this world that lasts forever.
Families fall apart. Friendships fade. Relationships end. People die.
And yet, despite everything, life goes on.
Life goes on in spite of everything. I wish it wouldn’t. I wish it would stop even just for a moment to grieve with me for all the losses I’ve had in my life. I wish life would stop even just for a moment to allow me to take a breath and properly process everything.
Fernando Passoa, A little larger than the entire universe:
When I was little I didn’t know
I’d grow up.
Or I knew but didn’t feel it.
Time at that age doesn’t exist.
Each day it’s the same kitchen table
With the same backyard outside,
And sadness, when felt,
Is sadness, but you aren’t sad.
I remember I came across a tumblr post that said something like this: childhood makes you feel like everything would linger. You know that one day you’d grow up and you can’t wait for it, but it also felt like a faraway thing and everything around you in your childhood felt like it would last forever. Your family, your friends, the happiness you have—they all felt eternal, like something that would always stay with you no matter what.
But then you grow up and these things are taken away from you whether by force or not, and you realise that nothing lasts forever. That even the things you thought would stay for a long time would soon come to an end. You lose your childhood and along with it is your happiness and innocence. You are then forced to face the world and have to work your way as a grown-up.
Alida Nugent, You Don’t Have to Like Me:
You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago.
I’ve always wondered how other people are doing it. Growing up, I mean. I wonder how all the grown-ups are going through their life, if they are faking it just as I am and if they also still feel like a child the same way that I do. And I think all of us are just doing our best to act like the grown-ups that we’re supposed to be, but deep inside we still feel like the children that we used to be. I’ve seen it in movies, read it in books, and heard it in songs.
I always feel like I’m just faking everything. Until now I feel like it’s not right for me to call myself a grown-up, because deep inside I still feel like a child. I still feel like I’m 13. I still feel like I’m 10. Like I’m 15. Like I’m any age I’ve been but 19.
I thought I knew everything when I was younger, that I could do this and I could live my life, but now that I’m 19 it feels as if I don’t know anything. I feel so lost and confused. I don’t know where I’m headed and I don’t know if I’m doing anything right in my life.
When I was younger, I always thought that adults knew everything. But now that I’m one of them I’m realising that they don’t know anything at all. I don’t know anything at all.
Will I ever grow up and stop feeling like a child? Or will I always be this way, forever stuck at 13?
What I’ve realised this month
I’m not a good person neither am I a bad person. I’m just a person who sometimes do good things and sometimes do bad things.
Kindness isn’t a state of being, but a choice that you continuously choose everyday.
Wishing you happiness,
Ji