on getting older but not old enough

Nothing particularly significant today, but my mood is really terrible regardless. I am feeling particularly surly and uncharitable with nothing specific to pin it on - perhaps it's the cumulation of small things.

I think I'm old at times. Especially lately, with people graduating undergrad and making all these posts about how it's the end of an era, how they'll never again have these easy times with friends, drunken jokes, late nights, a certain kind of freedom from any real-world responsibilities, and so on. It's familiar, the kind of thing college graduates have been saying for probably centuries (or at least decades, if we're allowing for the evolution of popular undergrad experiences to what it is today). Yet these posts make me feel my age, because these are people I consider my equals, close to me in age, but I forget that they are younger. Most of the time it doesn't matter, until posts like these make me realize I left undergrad three years ago. Not this year or last year, but three years ago. It's not such a huge amount of time but it drives home, nonetheless, that a certain sect of my friends are all younger than me - some of them significantly younger than me. Why am I not as close with the friends who are older? It's probably because I'm still incredibly immature inside. Not to say that anyone younger in years is automatically more immature, but that I still feel incredibly young, inexperienced, irresponsible, and immature remains true.

My parents are getting old. Not just older, but old. The meds they have to take, their health worries... The way they are surprised by their own ages each year, the way they are tired, the way my mom hates it a little bit - all of it makes me ashamed that I can't be more grown-up, more adult, more capable of taking care of myself and taking care of them.

People both older and younger tell me I'm still young. What am I supposed to say? In some ways, it's not true. Twenty-four this year is not that young. In some ways, it is. There's still a lot of my life left (presumably). I still have so far to go.

*

I just got back from a walk with my mom; we had a good discussion (read: heated argument that resolved into a good discussion) about Asians in America, first generation of immigrants versus their Westernized (but still Asian-influenced) children, political representation, minority status, speaking out, working hard, changing the world... I used to be afraid I would be like my parents when I grew up. Then I was afraid I wouldn't be, that I wouldn't be Asian enough. Now, I think I am more at peace with the fact that I will be different in some ways (ways that I am grateful for), many ways, perhaps - but that doesn't mean I will ever forget where my roots are.

My Asian-American identity is one I am wrestling with better than my age. We fight a lot of battles with ourselves, don't we?