Every time I go visit my mom's side of the family, it seems like I've always just missed something big.
The little girl is my cousin Abby, who will very shortly be two years old. I remember when I could hold her in one arm, and now she's walking and talking, and I feel so very, very old compared to her. What's even worse is that my younger cousins are starting to accidentally call me Auntie Lizzy on occasion, which makes me wonder just how bad that age gap is going to be in 10 years, when they're just getting into high school and I'm suddenly an 'old lady'.
My family has started to treat me differently as well--suddenly, I'm an adult and it's a huge change. Family gossip is spoken in my presence, people care about my plans after graduation, and they're starting to jibe about me settling down with a family. It's not that I mind so much, it's just a change from Before, when I was still a kid to everyone and treated as such.
There's some line that I crossed between Christmas and now, and I feel so much older than I should, because really, I'm not that old. My mother cringes every time I say that I feel old, because it makes her feel older as well, but I am starting to feel my age. I look back at high school and wonder why I was so wrapped up in things that really didn't actually matter--I find myself caring less and less what anyone else thinks of me, and more and more about what I'm going to do with my life now that I have the opportunity. The other night, I realized that in two years, I'll have graduated from college, and be starting my master's degree, and it's scary as hell, because it all seemed so far away before, but now I'm thinking about college loans and where I'm going to live, and getting a new job, and all of these grown-up things that part of me just wants to go away, so I can crawl into bed and watch cartoons on a Saturday morning. Even parts of my life that already seemed grown up are changing, making me wonder just where I'm going and what I'm doing.
Getting older isn't a bad thing, really, but it does take some getting used to.
- Lizzy
