Ageism

Take a deep breath, count:
1
2
3…

If this was going to happen, it was going to happen all at once.

And if we want to get to the bottom of it I am afraid we will have to delve into the realms of last year’s blog, into a bit of a fascination within it.
Age.
It was one of the first things I posted, 24^th of January it says. And no, I have not come to terms with it yet.
I asked such simple questions, about how it could never matter how old I was or who I was. But I had confessed how old I was; even though then and now I thought I could get away with pretending to be 28 forever.
Oh shame.
They were such noble delusions though! I strove for a world without ageism, thinking that my writing would transcend my age, regardless of what I put in the ‘About Me’ section, people would make up their own minds about how I old I was – older.
But I conceded that society doesn’t operate like that and we all judge each other by our book’s covers, our ‘About Me’ summary. And I read it too. I always wonder how old the person is, I am just as preoccupied and prejudiced as the next person.
And it kills me because I know age matters. It matters, for all the stupid reasons that humans love to assume things about each other, like sub-cultures and racism. They class you. Especially once you tell them how old you are… things, change.
Wasn’t the internet supposed to be the ultimate masquerade ball?
I wanted a Proper Mental Age Test.
I wanted anonymity and I wanted it to be personal and honest.
I wanted it all.
I almost let it spoil the blog for me, I knew it was something you had to think about beforehand, and I tried to avoid it.
Now I have run out of last year’s material and have to begin with the here and now.

I’m going out of my tiny little mind and I have been nailed to a wall. Figuratively speaking.

I have been surprised about the ages of other people lately. People I always assumed were older (everyone is older than me, and four inches taller) I had found that quite a few were closer to my age than I thought. I never doubted the capacity of people my age, but I was happily surprised.

I have even felt like confessing because of that. I have been lucky enough to find people who read my blog for what it was, I felt at home enough for you to finally know. But still I was going to be sneaky about it, call the blog something very boring, make it long and sandwich it between some distracting ones. You needn’t have known.

But dammit why did you choose that age? I though I was safe, I was so careful. I said I lived with my ‘housemate’ and not my mother; I caught the ‘train’ and not the school bus, to go to ‘work’ and not high school (although I do work as well).
The substitution was an art, it was effortless, minimal, I didn’t even feel bad about the lies until now. And it wasn’t even that which gave me away, it was me.
Combined with the incidence of University, which I thought was also a safe topic. People go to Uni all the time in their lives, mature age students yes? I’m not even the exact typical age for university, and yet my age was guessed.

I liked Blogger for not asking how old I was. I liked the masquerade ball that is the internet, it was made for my generation, we rule this space, it’s people over 35 who are really into it that are the rarity.
This would be on MySpace if I wasn’t afraid of my own age. MySpace wants to know everything; they are about the people, about networking and group membership, about who has the most friends.
To a degree I think the feeling can be likened to betrayal – this was supposed to be about the blog, not me.
I could keep fighting, I could be total cow and delete the comment which exposed me, and never talk about it again.

But no. Truly, I wouldn’t dream of it.

I deserved this, and it was going to happen. I feel no negative feelings towards the person who said it, I thank them. It’s the right thing to do; I would feel like my comments were ill begotten if I wasn’t myself.
All I have to say is you’re right. About it all, about singing and attitude and life. Experience speaks louder then words and I have quite a few years of receiving that message rather than giving it ahead of me. The amount of evidence on that is just laughable. The mere fact that I tried to pretend I was 12 years older, that I thought I could, that I was the undoing of myself, and that I was found out and served in spectacular fashion – is evidence of that.

There will be more of this I know. This is one of the Three Huge Mysteries That Tie My Whole Life Together. It’s a process, like the Amanda thing, like singing, like everything is. And it connects to everything. The blog was good because I could connect with Amanda and take the 16 year age difference out of the equation, which is totally different to standing in front of her and plainly showing it all. And also it has to do with singing in the way that I think I started too late, and it’s the kind of age where you have dreams of being a rock star.

I always considered myself mature, I mean that in a completely non-arrogant way, but I didn’t always. It’s what made me different in a lot of circles (something that I didn’t always like). I constantly gravitated towards adults. I was never raised as a child. I had no childhood, no Easter Bunny and no Santa Claus (no Hitler or holocaust either), I never went to other kids houses until I was old enough to perceive ‘normal’ and to beg to go. I lived and still live so far away from anything that it was hardly an option. I was despised. Am still despised by a lot of people my age. My best friends when I was little were the only other people I had contact with – my mother’s friends. Primary school the same, a few fleeting obsessive friendships with people my age and later on I experienced some link with the teachers. Yet another reason for the kids to hate me, I was fairly smart and the teachers’ pet. But I never lived for school; it was the girl who did that who got Dux the year I left. I had been promised that high school would be different, older kids, near adults, and a more understanding atmosphere. But anyone who ever went to high school knows that is where acceptance goes to die. It was hell for all the years but this one, my last one. I had spent all my time crying and whining about being bullied to the teachers and my mother (but of course I never let the bullies know that), or being psychoanalysed in some small dingy teacher’s office (both in small dingy offices and in rooms with small dingy teachers) or actually sitting down after school and having a decent meaningful conversation with a teacher. They are the people who got me through high school and helped me not lose faith in humanity half way through. And that is my life story.

Nah. But you get the point. Most of the other more recent stuff I have I have mentioned already.
I forgot where this is going…
I must mention that I feel completely fine about all this by this point. I almost feel like a weight has been lifted. To begin with I was a little flustered, but coming to terms with things is taking less and less time.
Take this one event that happened just a few days ago. And I’m sure the other person wouldn’t mind if I summarised by simply saying much awkwardness was had. This thing is the kind of thing that used to really tear me up, that I could curse myself for and obsess over for days. It’s not a question of what the something means to begin with because this had been important for quite a while. The other person did let it get to them, and last year I could have seen myself doing exactly the same thing, maybe even more.
I used to be friends with a girl who said that she never wanted to grow up, not in a Peter Pan way, but that she just had so much to figure out about the here and now that she wouldn’t mind if time stood still for a while. I was always in a rush to get to the finish. I was 15 and all I wanted to be was older, I wanted to escape this toxic teenage world as fast as I could and finally be accepted into the adult world. But I think I’m more at peace with where I am temporally now. I’m not a child anyway, both technically and in my thoughts and writings. If I had been adamant that it was otherwise, would you have really believed that I was? I hope not. But remember for now that –

I am Anika, and I…

am turning seventeen in May.