Excerpts from "Still Fighting It" by Ben Folds:
Everybody knows
It sucks to grow up
And everybody does
And so weird to be back here
Let me tell you what
The years still go on and
We're still fighting it
It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you'd feel the same things
I'm kind of at this stage in life that this song gets at, struggling with the idea that I'm not a kid anymore. I've been getting better about coming to grips with it more recently (probably when I refer to my peers I've started using terms that refer to them as adults rather than children), but it's still weird. Since my best recollection of life now really begins with my entrance into college, I look at everything before that and see it as separated to my current life, whatever it is. I guess 400-or-so miles of geographical distance will help with that.
I recall being kind of afraid during junior and senior years in HS as to what will happen to me once I went to college. I was on the cusp of the proverbial Ianus door of life, looking back and seeing 18-19 years (although probably remembering only the last 12), and then looking ahead and seeing an indefinite number of years of complete uncertainty (this was also probably around when I started freaking out thinking I wouldn't be able to go to college because they would all reject me or something). I still see years of uncertainty ahead of me, but perhaps it is because I'm only a junior in college that I can still see the next 18 months as relative certainty. Of course, there are several things that will come up over the incoming period of time that I will have to make decisions on (concerning figuring out my work/career status, class credit completions and my ever-running battle of perfection with my social life). But in looking back (and to explain why I chose the particular line of text for my entry title) I look at myself at age 18 or so and see how weird it is to be back in that time period, living the life I lived then. Perhaps it's because my confidence and levels of trust (as well as number of good friends vs acquaintances) have risen quite a bit over the last 2 or so years vs the previous 4 or so years.
Basically, this is probably the first semester where I stopped seeing myself as an overgrown kid. I'm still not quite mature enough to be considered a "man" ("guy" will suit me just fine right now) but I suppose if I don't spill out my life story to anyone I don't know really well they would probably consider me a man. I look at my friends, and while I call some of the guys "men" I call others "dudes", and with the opposite gender I waffle between "girls" and "women" (probably mostly because of their age, etc). It's weird, trying to fit myself and everyone else with all these labels society thrusts on us. Another thing that college has helped with is the fact that I don't look at people based on their age anymore. I used to do that all the time as a kid, when kids generally base authority on each other over who was born first. But I simply don't look at some of my friends and automatically think "he's 20," or "she's 21." I just don't. And I think college really has helped shed a lot of these labels and help me focus on what's more important, namely confidence and trust. I recall I really had lost my grip on these two attributes during my tensions with Steven towards the end of the summer, but in a way I've tried to look at it as something to keep in mind if similar conflicts arise again (which I'm sure they will, in different shapes and forms).
Anyway, enough blabbing. It's just weird to try and picture what my life and I were like back then (2003-ish, give or take...). I suppose if I could suck my gut in and get a job and plan events to do then I would get another few baby steps closer to manhood (still a weird term to me, though). Also, I have to return to practice, study, and write. It's finals week up on the Olaf Hill.