My obsession with not being outcast frightens me sometimes. Growing up, I’ve been concerned with adults judging me to be worthy of being seen as their equal. Any time someone older that me exchanges a thought or two with me, my brain immediately tries to shut down my personality and instead provide the “correct” responses. I’m fishing for things that will show this older person that I’m not naive nor spoiled nor lazy like young people are said to be. I’m not rude or impatient, prank-pulling or the make-a-joke-at-your-expense type. I’m an adult trapped in a youths’ body, and I’m different. The type of different that makes me special.
How sad I’ll be when I start trying to talk like a youth when I’m older. Maybe I’ll have a child of my own, and will try my hand at talking to their friends in a way that will allow them to accept me, see me as one of them. It must be that the grass is always greener on the other side of the age line.
Why the rush to grow up, I’d ask my younger self when she dreamt of independence. Hadn’t she heard of decision paralysis? Hadn’t she thought about what it might mean to know who she was? This little girl who code-switches how she spoke and acted in front of each person she met could know herself enough to owe to her a duty of care? No. That girl wanted to act like an adults’ equal because she wanted acceptance, not because she understood what adulthood meant. She wasn’t ready to grow up. Her mind, and consequently every cell in her body, resisted the thought of emotionally maturing. She staved her mind of the beaconing calls of her peers, drowning them out in a self-serving mantra of being busy or having different arrangements or being restrained by her surroundings. She simply didn’t want to leave the comfort of being a dependent.
Harmattan: a cool wind, known to carry sand, that blows in the northeastern direction over northwestern Africa. Leads to poor visibility, associated with a dull haze. I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count and Americanah now, both of which (I think) mentioned this harmattan. And now I forget the context. I guess I could use it to say, it was a cool harmattan morning.
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