15 going on 80

Never before this year have I seen such a drastic change in my fellow students after one summer vacation. My personal theory is that the freedom associated with getting their licenses and being able to roam free for two months has allowed everyone in my grade a chance for growth and maturity. Whatever the cause, the seeing new maturity of my peers after 10^th grade led me to feel old for the first time in my life the Saturday before junior year, and the feeling has continued ever since.  Apart from being novel, the feeling is a bit uncomfortable; I feel a bit of doubt and dread clouding the pure and effortless worldview my stubbornness once created for me.  And the feeling has crashed on me all at once. Because I am six months to a year younger than most of my classmates, milestone birthdays have long passed their glory by the time I reach them- after all, who gets excited about turning 13 when everyone else is already an astounding 14? However, now that I approach the pinnacle of my teenage years and have to make thousands of tiny “huge” decisions, I start to feel my knees getting knobblier and my face crinklier. Well, not quite, however, the sensation I do feel is undoubtedly the strangest I have experienced so far in my life, and I can’t seem to shake it. 

I don’t really feel as remorseful and whiny as I must sound. My life is exciting and I am enjoying it fully. Sometimes I seem to conjure new skills and use them in entirely new context; it’s a great feeling to realize you can finally carry out conversations with adults and successfully fill out paperwork. My main issue lies in the speed at which my life seems to be playing out - though the things I dreaded used to arrive faster and time used to stop before I got what I wanted, now they have equalized into a fast-forwarded blur of excitement, deadlines, weekends that are whizzing past me faster than I can keep track of where or why they are going. My failure to keep track of the latter is the worst part, as I may do a thousand meaningful activities and never learn from them because I have no time to reflect in the way I once would have.  Life has changed from a baby roller coaster to something a bit more hardcore. I suppose it’s really the “welcome to New York City” or the “not in Kansas anymore” feeling of disconcertment that I have had lately, and hopefully I will adapt soon.