I don't feel like a teenager...

I’m eighteen years old. That makes me a teenager, right? Well, technically, yes, I guess. And in many ways I’m very teenager-y; I go out and I drink and probably the most important thing in life to me is hanging out with my friends and I spend way too much time on the internet and I fight with my parents and I’m still far more idealistic than an average person whose lived their life longer than me…but I don’t really feel like a teenager anymore.

Of course, this raises the question of what a teenager is. On my plane home from California there was a girl of about thirteen right in my line of sight. I noticed her because she’s was such a stereotypical young teenager; reading a magazine about Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers, with a quiz on “how should YOU rock stripes?”, and adamantly staying awake for the majority of the flight despite the fact that it was an overnight flight.

And that’s defiantly not what I’m like.

But it could be argued that that kinda phase is more the pre-teen phase, that maybe for some gets carried over into early teenagerhood.

I guess I see a teenager as what I was from around fifteen to seventeen (when I was thirteen/fourteen…I don’t know what I was. I was very aimless and didn’t really have a life). You start going out a lot and start developing a teenage style social life based around drinking and parties, in my case you develop a tight nit circle of friends, you start learning how to dress and do yourself up so you don’t look like a complete mess, you have things with guys…you’re still very young and in many ways innocent, but you probably don’t feel it because you’re having all these experiences that are all new and shiny and exciting for you. And you are maturing. You’re starting to learn to view the world and people more complexly, you’re having to make some real decisions about the future (even if at first this only means what A levels you’re going to take). But you’re still, really, quite young.

Not that I’m not young now. In some ways I’m way more aware that I’m young than I was when I was fifteen. But that’s because I have far greater perspective than I did when I was fifteen.

But take a fifteen year old and a twenty one year old…and I would defiantly group myself with the twenty one year old. In the past year I have grown up a lot; I’ve had to deal with stuff that I could not have at fifteen, I’ve done things I probably would never have been awesome enough to do at fifteen. And I’m still making decisions about my future, but now those involve money and relationships and jobs and really long term plans and looking after myself.

And that’s a big one.

Looking after myself.

I really believe that you should and mostly will always have people in your life who will help you out. We are not totally independent creatures; we work together and look out for one another. But how that works, for me, at eighteen, is very different to how that worked just a few years ago.

Because now I feel like a part of a web, and an equal part of it; I have loads of people who will help me and look out for me, but I’m not…well, a child. Clearly when you’re young you are responsible for the things you do…but less so. And you’re looked after. I was pretty “mature” at fifteen, but I was still very much looked after. And although now I’m still financially supported by my parents, the dynamic is very different. I’m not just a helpless kid anymore.

I’m still very, very young.

I’ve done loads in the past year but in so many ways I’m still very inexperienced.
Hell, I still don’t know how to cook.
But I don’t feel like a teenager anymore, not really.
I still go out and drink and do “teenager-y” things, but what twenty year old doesn’t do those things?
I feel like an adult.
A young, sometimes very silly, adult.
But an adult none the less.