Quarter-life Crisis

Over eight months ago, I left America as an over-ambitious, post-grad soul-searching wide-eyed twenty-two year old. I voluntarily called quits on everything important in my life and positioned myself across the world.

Why? 

Because I felt too young for anything resembling monotony. If not now, then when?

Lately, I've been feeling all too old. The feeling has been a recurring damper, usually paying a visit while I navigate through the swarm of hundreds of children running aimlessly during the lunchtime madness in a Thai primary school. Or maybe, it's over the inedible (but practically free) school lunch, whilst sitting among middle-aged and senior white men who moved to Thailand for better or for worse, that I want to cringe in my supposed youth.

(Are middle-aged conversations always so dull? Is this really what I have to look forward to?)

And when did I get to this side of the classroom? When did I become responsible enough to lead a classroom of 50+ students? When did I become a role-model? At what point did I become wise enough to impart a piece of my knowledge to another human being? 

I try and think back to when I was a grade school student, which couldn't have been longer than yesterday, and hope I wasn't anything like the hyper-active students I'm now in charge of controlling.

I came to Thailand feeling at the epitome of my youth at twenty-two, and now suddenly, I feel a like a dilapidated twenty-three year old that can no longer have a drink without a malicious headache the morning after. 

There certainly could be worse places to have a quarter-life crisis, such as a cubicle doing something I don't want to be doing. Still, I am struggling to get past the feeling of being honestly & utterly afraid to grow up (or to face the fact that I am grown up.)

I know I still have plenty of the care-free years to come, but I am currently trying to accept that the clock is ticking, and the only direction it's going is forward.