on age, friendships and relationships

I had recently just had a great, slightly awkward, conversation with Z about my age and it made me think so hard in the shower about one of my biggest pet peeves that I hadn't classified as a pet peeve, yet. None of these things have happened between Z and I, but she always makes me think *that blessing from Heaven, she is*. 

Disclaimer: 

Yeah, I'm 20. So? I acknowledge that I have things to learn. And I am so open and willing to learn them. This is WHY I surround myself with people who I know, for a fact, have things to teach me. I refer to them as my mentors. These people are the ones in my life that I truly respect, that I expect to hear from more often than I listen to. But I'm not referring to those who I learn from. Those who are in my life specifically to guide me, to help teach me, to help me learn in other ways. I have a lot of people in my life like this. I'm talking about those who aren't old enough to be my mother but treat me like they are, anyway. I don't want you to read this and take it as me thinking I'm so learned, wise, and self-important. Because I am NOT. Not at all. I have So much in life to learn and I will continue to learn from others until the day that I perish. I am not so bull-headed where I cannot except criticism, advice, guidance, love, mentorship, etc. I welcome it, always. Because I know that it is forming me into the person that I know I am and that I want to present to others. 

I can separate the mentors from those who just want to be so much older than everybody else that anyone who is younger is treated exaggeratedly as such. Am I being clear here? 

But here's the issue on the OTHER side of the rainbow:

A combination of things always happens when people find out my age, especially relative to their own. It usually happens after we've begun to bond at closer level, realizing that we relate to each other in a lot of ways, disagree with each other on other things, and have generally begun a tight-knit friendship. Most often times, my friends are in their mid 20s-early 40s. Why that happens? I don't know. But then a reference comes up that I don't immediately recognize, or someone reminisces on a memory that I can't share, or an event that happened that I cannot recall the details of and then the dreadfully awkward question happens, "Wait, how old are you???" And then I immediately am flushed. Because then the conversations we have begin to change, the way I express myself becomes cute and entertaining, my respectability is diminished, and all of sudden, the very frank way that we discuss things in our lives is limited. Now my reactions about my life changes are "cute" and becomes "things you'll understand once you're older (chuckle chuckle)", and my ideas about politics, religion, the environment are "views that you still need to separate from what you've been taught" and then when I'm scared, it's "awww, don't be scared" and then when I used to be an ear for advice, now it becomes, "Wait, why am I even telling you this? You can't help me. You can't listen to me and my problems because you're young and you haven't had problems yet," or "You haven't really experienced life yet, so you can't have formed x opinion or relate to me on y basis." And then I'm shrugged off, no longer invited to go out and chill, no longer called for advice or just to listen, no longer asked for my opinion, no longer considered worthy of ADDING my opinion, no longer considered a valuable person to be around because "I'm too young" "I don't have experience" "Chile, what problems could YOU possibly have?" "Oh, that's just a part of growing up" and my favorite, "That's not true. You couldn't possibly be right because I'm older and I'm wiser and I know what I'm talking about (despite the fact that I keep making the same fucked up decisions time after time)". I don't want to be patronized in my circle of friends. I don't want to be treated as the annoying little sister. I don't want people to laugh at everything I say, at my attempts to express who I am (unless it is done so comically), brush me off as "just being so young and not knowing about LIFE" and most of all, I don't want to be called "childish" or "immature" simply because we disagree or we have failed to come to a shared conclusion. And suddenly, the things that I say, my manner of humor, my ways of physically expressing myself becomes an Aha! moment to someone, "Ohhhhh, I understand now. It's because you're younger than me! That's why you do xyz, act like xyz, say xyz..."

These are the things I hate. I can't help it that at most times I truly don't relate with a LOT of people in my age group that I am surrounded by. This is a key point. It's not that people in my general age group are all the same, I'm speaking in terms of my personal locality. For the most part, some of us just don't gel. I'm not trying to do what they want to do. Some people critique me as say, "Act your age, you're going to be this way forever" or "enjoy your youth" or "stop trying to grow up too fast" and I'm like...."Thanks for defining how I should live for me." How are people my age SUPPOSED to  act? Clue: I act like myself. I am myself and I like to stay true to who I am while realizing that this is a process and that every day I am evolving. If that doesn't fit your personal idea of what a person my age should act like then, OH WELL. And whenever people tell me to "enjoy" something, I get really upset, because who's to say that at the end of it all, I am not enjoying the smaller, simpler things in my life. How do I demonstrate to you and the rest of the world that I'm "taking advantage" or "enjoying" something? Clue: I don't need to demonstrate to you anything. I know what I'm enjoying, what I am not enjoying, etc. One commenter on my tumblr attacked me because my tendency to speak my mind and rant, even, smacked  of childish tendencies to her. She told me to "grow the fuck up and be the grown woman you claim to be..." Ouch. So there's a guidebook as to how to be a "grown woman", is there?  So I suppose, grown women don't rant or type out their feelings for audiences to peruse, enjoy anonymously, and critique from behind screen names and false identities, eh? That's fine. Clue: I'm going to continue to write out my feelings and thoughts and rants for as long as I want to. And my ability to express myself on a global stage is in no way, shape, or form relevant to my age. And age (life years) does not always determine the amount of experience in life (whatever the hell that means) someone has and surely does not always give due justice to the amount of maturity a person may have as a result of said experience(s). 

With all of that being said, evaluate people individually, for who they are, for what they've been through, not as a collective group into a "generation" or "young people these days" or whatever else phrase y'all will come out with later. 

Basically, I don't like being patronized. Did you catch that? #smileslightly

A big thanks goes out to Z for allowing me a window into my own soul. I love you for the conversations we have and don't have and have yet to have.