There are days when I realise I don’t feel nineteen the way nineteen is supposed to feel. Not because I’m unusually wise or sorted, I’m not, but because I’ve been thinking a little too hard, a little too early. And I know I’m not the only one. A lot of girls carry this quiet, internal tiredness that doesn’t match the number on their birthday cake.
Some of it comes from the way girls are raised here. There’s no big announcement, no formal lesson. You just absorb certain expectations. You’re told to be sensible long before anyone explains what that means. You’re expected to read situations, avoid mistakes, adjust smoothly, apologise first, and manage things well. Boys get the freedom to experiment and figure life out as they go; girls get nudged into responsibility before they’ve even had a chance to enjoy being young.
It doesn’t turn you bitter, but it does make you older on the inside. You start thinking before reacting, analysing before enjoying, managing before relaxing. Not because life is dramatic, but because you’re trained to anticipate instead of simply experience. Somewhere in all of that, girlhood gets trimmed down without you noticing.
A lot of that early maturity also comes from family roles. In households like ours, elder siblings — especially sisters — end up becoming something between a guide, a buffer, and a second parent. Mine wasn’t always like that. When we were younger, she was the calm, composed, quietly steady one: the type who stayed unbothered even when everyone else was in overdrive.
But adulthood reshapes even the softest people. Responsibilities started piling up faster than she could slow them down. Now she still steps in first when things get chaotic, but she does it with commentary, reminders, irritation, and a running list of things that “should have been handled better.” And honestly, she’s allowed that. When life hands you roles you never planned for, even the calmest person starts sounding like the practical one.
Watching her juggle that mix of composure and exhaustion taught me more about adulthood than my age has. I learned parts of maturity from seeing how even grounded people can get worn out. Some of my own “early growing up” probably came from realising that if adulthood can tire her out, it’s okay if it tires me too.
That’s how you suddenly find yourself nineteen with a mind that feels older. Not because life broke you, but because you’ve been aware for too long — aware of emotions, reactions, expectations, and the social rules you didn’t ask for but still follow. It’s a quiet kind of aging, the sort that settles into your thoughts long before it shows on your face.
But lately, I’ve been learning that I don’t have to live in that seriousness all the time. You’re allowed to feel lighter than your upbringing trained you to be. You’re allowed to laugh too loudly, to be silly without embarrassment, to enjoy moments without analysing them. You’re allowed to be young, properly, without guilt.
Growing up too fast doesn’t mean you lost your childhood; it just means you have to make space for softness now. Not childishness... just softness. Joy that doesn’t need interpretation. Moments that don’t need managing. Youth that isn’t squeezed into leftover hours.
I think that’s what I want now: a little less awareness, a little more ease. Not to undo the maturity I’ve collected, but to balance it. To let the nineteen-year-old inside me exist without always feeling forty.