the realisation of maturity

shout out to my dad for giving me his old fancy camera, I have no clue how to use it but get ready for some dank pics when I do ! 

I feel like things keep happening in my life at the moment that remind me that I am maturing. Not even growing up, but maturing. In a seemingly normal 24 hours of my life, four things happened that made me realise I am growing the f u c k up:

•  I found out my friend has chest hair (a completely normal thing for most boys my age, just surprised me, then I was surprised at my surprise, and then surprised at the fact that chest hair on my friends isn’t meant to be a surprise for me anymore)
• My friends sixteen year old sister spent hours on the phone talking about clothes 
• An old friend posted a new Instagram 
• A boy at work (who had turned 18 but a mere two weeks ago) tried to hit on me 

Woah Libby we get it, you’re 20 now! No longer a teenager! Get over it! You see, I can’t get over it though. I am an overthinker. Things don’t just happen in my life. Everything lingers on my brain for longer than it should, there is no happening moment in my mind-  just a constant blur of past and present. Therefore, I can’t really seem to get over it. So here we are again!

I seem to be constantly noticing things that set me apart from younger people. On a regular basis I catch myself thinking how young some people seem, but when I was sixteen I did not feel that young. I didn’t even recognise how much I had changed until my work life surrounded me with 18 year olds and I found myself constantly noticing the difference in maturity. Well differences, but also similarities. When the younger boys at work make crude remarks, or throw in offensive words they look to me confidently, as if to assert a maturity and confirm that they are now able to say such words. It’s funny though, because me and my friends use equally as vulgar language (all in good jest dw) but there is no sneaky looks aside afterwards to clarify that everyone heard the dick joke they just made, there is no laughs afterwards at the swear word used. Things have just become accepted now. The humour doesn’t stem from hearing the swear word, but from the way it’s used. Flirting is different now, conversations with friends are different now, everything is different now because there is no hidden desire to be older, the need for acceptance has lessened and just everything has changed, but not really, but it has. It hasn’t changed, so much as morphed into something more natural.

It’s strange acknowledging your own maturity, because you just grow up and mature and so does everyone around you. It all happens invisibly, at least for me it did, until a normal moment triggers a thought of how sophistacted you seem, or of how strange it is to be having such an adult conversation creating an abrupt feeling of misplaced maturity, except it is not misplaced at all. Then there is also a strange feeling of grown up-ness when I am around friends from secondary school who I only see intermittently. I once used to spend every day with them, and I loved them and cherished them then I see where they are now and they are vaguely recognisable but so unfamiliar as well. They’ve achieved the same level of ‘growing up’ as me, but I haven’t seen the development, and then it becomes hard to process the new people they have become, because the memories of them that form who they are in my head aren’t the same as the reality. It is strange.

What is equally as strange is that the boys I am friends with are now able to grow attractive facial hair, rather than wispy moustache and patchy beards. Or is it even weirder that I am now able to appreciate facial hair? I don’t know! All I know is, we’re all growing up which is cool and great but fuck me I find it weird to see friends at twenty, when I haven’t actually seen how they have become this twenty year old.