18.

I've been 18 now for nearly two months. A lot of the time, my feeling's on this range from sheer panic to feeling ehh about it to feeling completely comfortable. It's kind of odd.

The panic and the 'ehhh' feeling makes sense to me. I'm officially an 'adult.' I can drink, I can drive, I can get a tattoo, I can smoke (if I really, really want), and I can probably own a house (if I was a millionaire, perhaps). Being a 'proper' adult is daunting to say the least. I mean, I still watch Disney movies at least bi-fortnightly and I've have never even had an 'official' boyfriend (Not that that means much. Troian Bellisario didn't get kissed till she was 18 and she's turned out alright. Troian Bellisario is sort of my spirit animal. Not that you need to be kissed and/or have a boyfriend to be an adult. Eh. Getting sidetracked).

The thing that scares me more are the moments when I feel comfortable with being 18. Like it makes perfect sense that I'm now this age. I've been thinking about that a lot recently. I think I've finally figured out why. Being 17, I kind of felt like I was in this non-space. I wasn't 'sweet sixteen' but I wasn't yet a legal adult. I couldn't really identify with being a child (and I say that very, very loosely), but I couldn't really identify being an adult either.

I guess you could say that I had a bit of a problem with my identity. I didn't know my boundaries. I was just lost, really. Is there some sort of study that talks about age and identity and the correlation between the two?

I'm not saying that I feel better at 18. I truly don't most of the time. I still have issues with boundaries, and I don't like the idea of being an adult. I just feel like there's some sort of thread that makes me that little bit more comfortable.

It makes me wonder what's going to happen in the next few years though. 19, 20. Will I feel as lost in those? 21. Will I feel the same sort of weird comfort? If all things go well, I'll be an actual adult then. I'll have graduated. Hopefully have a job. Possibly an apartment or house.

I don't particularly like thinking about the future. More than anything, it makes me nervous. But am I alone in feeling the comfort of an 'important' age? I just have a lot of mixed feelings about it.