On getting on

It was my birthday yesterday. I wasn't even that excited leading up to it. I was excited about the hats-and-headwear party I was planning, but the actual birthday I could take or leave. Because I felt old. Do you know how old I am now? I'm nineteen. 19. NINETEEN.

How can I be turning 19 and feel past it? As in most cases, I will choose blame culture, and not my own crippling self-doubt, for my angst and woes. And in my own comfortable, Western-society existence, nineteen seems to be the most in-between of the ages: a tacked-on post-script of a year after the sudden flood of adulthood at 18 and the end of an era at 20. What do people even do when they're 19? Work. Study. NOTHING GOOD. You start to bid your childhood a final farewell, and begin to resign yourself to the pressures and responsibilities that come with Growing Up, and all the baggage that comes with Getting Old.

Yes, age is a weird thing in our culture. At one of my jobs, I'd say that almost half of the people who walk in are 60+. It's strange how, beyond a certain age, people become harmless and genderless, lisping around new teeth, struggling with purse clasps, talking and talking like they're reaching out for some sort of acknowledgement that they are still a real person, not a liability or a money-sucker or just Grandpa. You acknowledge them like you acknowledge children, and expect them to fade away eventually.

People freak out a bit when you don't follow that prescribed path into revisited infancy. Especially if you're a lady! People get all kinds of knickers in twists at Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon looking like Hot Ladies at awards ceremonies, because once you're past A Certain Age you're not allowed to have obvious gender labels. Or something?

And then there's the opposite end, where young people are ungracefully lumped into that curse upon us all, Generation Y. Thanks a lot, you guys: because I'm under 25, everyone's gonna think I'm a commitment-phobic leech with no head for responsibility who spends thousands on drinking and hair products. Past 25 and it's smooth sailing, though, right? It bothers me when young people are ignored or patronisingly placated. Especially teens at high school. Jeez there are some smart kids around, kids who struggle and struggle to get their ideas out and their voices heard because no-one pays any attention to a kid with acne in Grade 11. God help you if you're a cute girl, too.

But at the same time, we're not encouraged to be young, certainly not by the media, certainly not young as in childish. I won't go into the tween phenomenon, it's terrifying and we all know about it, but there's a reason I'm feeling old at 19. We're all encouraged to act older quicker because it's cooler. Global communications is helping to homogenise the behaviour of certain peer groups, so you see the same behavioural trends in 14-year-olds as you do in 21-year-olds who are all connected to similar networking sites. The biggest audiences of magazines like Seventeen and Girlfriend, ostensibly marketed towards, well, seventeen-year-olds, are twelve- and thirteen-year-olds desperately wanting to grow up and be cool.

There's pressure on you to accomplish things before you're properly "old" as well, because, well, look at Brigitte Bardot: once you're old, you're nothing but a crazy racist cat-lady with handbag-skin. And "old" is getting younger and younger. Mid-twenties seems a death knell for some of my friends. Existential crises hit at 21. When I say I'm looking forward to being 30, people look at me like I've lost it. But shit, you know, I am looking forward to being 30 - if for no other reason than that I have never seen a gangly 30-year-old. No way am I still going to be gangly when I hit 30. It'll be just like that Jennifer Garner movie: a sudden transformation into a successful, goddess-like creature, sure of herself and her values, with a kickass job and maybe like, a beagle.

But until then, I'm not going to allow myself to feel old at 19. Ageism or no, I am lucky to be 19 now, here, in Australia. Where would I be 50 years ago? 100 years ago? Not at university, that's for sure. Maybe married. Maybe with BABIES. It's a luxury to even get to this age in some parts of the world, even now. Hell no I'm not going to whinge about it.

Instead I've been oscillating wildly between feeling like I've accomplished nothing in my near-fifth of a century, and feeling flushed, absolutely flushed with youth - potential - endless, untapped resources! But now, after it's happened, I feel older in a good way. More reponsible. More grown-up, but still young. More my own person. More independent. Like I can take myself seriously now.

And that's good. That's all I could ask for.

That, and creme brulee, of course.