I turned 23 a couple of months ago and it’s truly beginning to dawn on me that I can’t turn the clock back. You see, I was 16 when the COVID lockdowns began. Back then it felt like the whole world was ahead of me. Truthfully, I hoped something like COVID would happen every day before school: some sort of catastrophe that would allow me to stay home for months.
Well, like everything else in my life, it was handed to me. I slowly became a NEET. I didn’t get good enough grades to enter the university I wanted. I’ve been in and out of community college for years, not knowing what to study. After years of infrequent employment and college enrollment, I have to face up to the fact that I no longer have forever.
It has been seven years since I was 16. In seven years I will be 30. In two years, I will be 25 - the age in which physical aging begins. My physical peak is rapidly approaching, and my adolescent youth lost. I am truly no longer a “kid”.
I never went out with my high school friends, we stayed inside and played video games online. I never did all the normal teenager things I see teenagers do when I go to the mall. It hurts a little. No, it hurts a lot, that I never did those things. It hurt when I WAS in high school, seeing those normal teens do normal teen things. Seven years later, it hurts less but… it still hurts.
But I’m not decrepit. I only obtained the right to purchase alcohol two years ago. Two. Just two. Am I young? No. But I sure as hell ain’t old. I can never redo high school. I may never redo college. I may never have a “normal” college experience. Of course it hurts. It hurts I wasn’t a normal kid, but an autistic nerd. Of course I am filled with regret.
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