A quick word with my 18 year old self...

My English teacher said to us, her class of 16 year olds, 'You'll think this is funny, and you won't understand it yet, but I still feel the same as I did when I was your age'. We did think it was funny, as she was old (all of 40, I guess).

Yet it stuck with me, and it is something I truly appreciate having learned so early in life. At my grand old age of 107, I still feel like a child. I still feel all the insecurities at times, of a teen. I still feel out of my depth and a fraud, someone pretending to be a grown up*.

All this is normal. For some people, there is no magical age when you suddenly get your shit together. You won't transform into a glamorous, sophisticated, intelligent being overnight, like television portrays.

Sadly at 107 you'll still get pimples (seriously, what is that about?). You will still like clothes that are probably not described as sensible. You will still like toys, not to play with, just to have (and I mean like a playmobil Dakar truck, not a pervy euphemism).

There will come a time when you hate what you see in the mirror, because it is not a reflection of how you feel, just some strange old lady fading from existence.

Even worse, there will come a time when the majority of your friends will implode - there is midlife crises and depression in your male friends, and divorce and cancer in store for your female friends. The calls bearing good news are few and far between. Those bringing death or sadness are more frequent. The worst part, with all this pain, is there is little you can do to 'fix' it. That is in the hands of others, and the lap of the Gods. But you can try. Try to help, try to take a tiny bit of sting out of their pain, try to be there for them. Never ever judge or ignore, as your turn will come. (Never tell them to snap out of it, pain has a longevity we can not measure, as each person needs and feels differently).

So enjoy your youth, enjoy the feeling of freedom, of being open to possibilities. You may feel insecure, or that the odds are against you, but age will not change that. So make the most of what you have.

“Time is a gift, given to you, given to give you the time you need, the time you need to have the time of your life. ” Norton Juster

Linking up again with #MLSTL

*I've told this story before, but I love it. When staying in a bush youth hostel, two kids and I were the first awake in the wee small hours. The kids discovered there was a large snake in the lounge room, let in by the lazy teens who left the door open overnight. One of the girls looked at me, wide eyed in panic "What do we do?" My reply, as I shut the door, locking the snake in, was "Let's wait for one of the grown ups to get up, they'll know what to do." This answer prompted two small faces to screw up in puzzlement.