Just a kid

As much as school prepared me for the real world, I was never ready. I didn't realize this until I started working at a real office, with real grownups. I was suddenly thrown into this world that made me feel so insignificant.

In school, our problems were forgetting do to our homework, trying to understand why that top doesn't work with that skirt, and why that perfect-for-you boy is in love with someone else. When I was in school, I cried because my favorite character in a book died, or because a song was just too sad. We didn't have to deal with grownups issues.

And then I was thrown into a world I'm still not ready to deal with. I learned that people are jealous, angry and don't want others to succeed. I learned people actually, shamelessly cheat on people. They lie, they steal and they hurt people.

While trying to come to terms with all of this, another issue came up. Not only did I have to live in the adult world, I also had to become an adult. For some reason, people think drinking and smoking and going about with men is what the ordinary adult female does. I'm someone who needs her mother's permission to stay at office till late. I need to inform my parents about my whereabouts. I can't even cross the road without nearly being knocked down. And I have to now deal with people offering me drinks.

And so when I say, 'no thank you' they look at me like I'm a hero*, and ask, "oh wow! You don't drink?" And my response is that it's not that I don't. But it's not that I do either. I eat crab, but that doesn't mean I go looking for crab and eat crab whenever I can. If I feel like it, sure, I may. But I can live without it.

But the real reason I say no to those drinks is this. I'm still a kid. Sure, being twenty means I'm an adult. However, I don't feel like one. I cry over the simplest things. After a tiring day at work, I need to be alone or I would try to stab people. I can't choose my own clothes. I don't know how to take care of myself. If I start drinking at twenty, I would end up spending most of my life as an adult, doing grown up things. And I don't want that. I want to be a kid for as long as possible. I don't want to grow up right now.

So let me be a kid. Think twice before you try to share adult jokes with me, or get me to do grownup things. Think twice before you ask me why I'm still single, or why I don't want to be alone with certain people. It's not because I don't know how to deal with certain situations. Instead, it's because I want to avoid such situations.

I may work, earn money, go about alone. I may associate with people twice my age. And yet, at the end of the day, I'm still a kid. And I need you to respect that. I need you to stop forcing the adult world down my throat because there's nothing worse than living in a world you aren't comfortable with.

*what's with people assuming you are doing this great big service by not drinking, smoking or eating meat? You aren't a better human being because you don't do any of that!