Everyone else grew up except for me now I'm dirty and chewing dust
Everyone else got to grow up and move on in life. Everyone has their bags and brief cases packed to fly to adultville, and it seems like I barely have a single sock packed. It feels like everyone already knows what they're doing or what they plan to be when they grow up, and I'm just barely processing my childhood.
The progress of life is a race and I'm currently in last place.
I don't mean to be poetic when I say I'm like a child, because I truly am just a child in an older teenager's body. I mean, I felt like I was making some progress on my 'personality' but now my brain has firmly buried and burrowed itself into being a kid.
Maybe it's because I'm turning 17, maybe it's because I'm worried about being legally recognized as an adult next year. 17 sounds like an age too old for me, like oversized clothing: I can technically fit in it but it's not snug enough to feel comfortable going through the entire day wearing this.
Maybe this is just a result of the last 4 years sucking for me, but I can feel myself suffocating from dwelling on nostalgia sometimes. All I've done was rewatch old content over and over from when I was a kid. I sometimes got sad and cried over the fact my childhood was over and I couldn't re-experience it again because of the worn off novelty; it's like a card trick, once you know how it worked it's no longer enjoyable.
My mind plays like a broken record, it constantly repeats itself with memorabilia from the 2010s; even when it's own tongue falls off after repeating itself so much, you'll recieve an endless monotone hum instead. I'm so deaf to the current culture and trends, I can feel how grainy my head gets due to being in the dirt for so long. I've geniunely stopped caring about memes after 2022, but for some reason my mind has an irrational hatred for "The great meme reset"
At the same time, I never got to experience "being a teenager", unless if you count being a teenager as just arguing and engaging in drama all of the time. I've just sheltered myself in the umbrella of children's media because that's what I was used to for most of my life; I'm not saying I changed at all, I still would rather watch my cartoons than watch something live action.
I'm self-concious about the things I like because they have always been things meant for children, small children specifically; 'things that only appeal to babies and toddlers' type small. If there is any definition out there for how mature your interest can be, I don't think I ever had a "mature interest" in my whole lifespan.
Whenever I come up with my interest in group chats, my smile melts down into a frown overtime. It's always "I used to endulge in XYZ", "I remember XYZ"... blah blah blah, what I'm saying is IT'S ALL IN PAST TENSE.
Past tense like how I and a bunch of other little hatchling birds walk together in a flock, shared interests and shared smiles and laughs. Until TIME PASSES and we get a little bigger in size. Suddenly, everyone learnt how to fly, so I see all of my peers spread their wings and enter the skies; I try to fly like the others but all I'm doing is scuffing my rear into the cement ground, and I have to accept I'm all alone now. You could say it's my fault for not explicitly learning how to fly, but it felt like that skill came to the other birdie friends so naturally, meanwhile I had to conciously learn how to use my wings.
If you asked me on my input on "Age regression", you might notice that I thump my foot at the ground like a rabbit at the thought of that. It sounds nice, a bunch of grown up people acting like little kids and engaging in little kid media, sounds like me, maybe I found my flock... It's just a headspace, and that both hurts and betrays me! a 'headspace', like it's something you can instantly switch off like a light whenever you need to.
I think my light switch is broken personally, I could never tell myself to do something middle aged on command.
This is personally not something new to me, I've always had this "revert back to the olden times" thing happen to me a few times before, earliest recorded was around December 2024. Now it just feels like I'm sinking in quicksand, I don't have a lot of mental horse power left and I'm starting to feel a little stupid. I don't get interested in new things, I rather arch my spine and isolate myself from the others with 2020s knowledge.
It seems to sound serious, too bad therapists make me jumpy.