i’m home with some sort of mysterious fatigue, listening to my amanda palmer station on pandora and watching the giants game in a haze, so i suppose this is a good time as any to contribute to my blog. apologies in advance if my brain is a little scrambled or if my writing simply sucks.

criss celebrated his fortieth birthday (yes, fortieth. i’ll save you the math – we’re sixteen years apart) on sunday. i’ll be twenty-four next month so we’re definitely in very different phases in our respective lives, but earlier i did something weird. for the first time in a while, rather than comparing myself upward to criss (“when i was two, you were graduating from high school”) i thought about where i was ten years ago (preparing for eighth grade) and was absolutely boggled by how far away that time seems. on the flip side, criss being sixteen years my senior doesn’t phase me one bit and i wouldn’t notice the age difference but for two things: his friends who are 10+ years older than me and their kids, and the way criss watches out for me with the wisdom he’s acquired in his extra years. but looking back on me in middle school, that feels like a canyon. i can only imagine how it feels for criss.

i never really connected with people my own age, so instead i looked to teachers and adult church members for conversation. i suppose this could have set the stage for my attraction to older men. growing up i crushed on prince william (a few years my senior) and later actors such as hugh grant and pierce brosnan. i even liked my art teacher in sixth grade, and had a thing for the valedictorian of the eighth grade class that year. but ten years ago was when i really started to graduate to actually pursuing older guys.

in eighth grade i had reached my full-grown height of five feet ten inches and a little extra, and the combination of my height and the way i carried myself usually fooled strangers into thinking i was older than my fourteen years, sometimes even college-aged. that school year i met adam, a bag boy (i believe courtesy clerk is the correct term) at our local grocery store. he made a comment about my smile and i was hooked from then on. he was a student at a local community college, and in my deluded adolescent mind, i thought i could have a chance with him, until i let slip that i was in eighth grade. he didn’t smile at me after that.

i had a couple of boyfriends my age, but they were just too young. when i was seventeen i made my first real leap, at least in my heart and mind, to a man twenty-one years my senior. he was a special one. we connected creatively, especially through music. the interest was mutual, but he had misgivings. not so much about what people would think, but more about holding me back and not being able to keep up with my young energy, and we went our separate ways as friends.

i had three other boyfriends within a couple years of my age but for various reasons (younger than me and immature, like rather than love, clashing personalities and ideals) they didn’t work. i met some other older guys whom i fancied (and some who fancied me), but nothing came of that. and then along came criss.

he was thirty-eight at the time, but he didn’t look a day over thirty-two. the funny thing is unlike the other guys i’d crushed on or gone steady with, i wasn’t head-over-heels from the get go, which was probably a good sign, because i tend to jump into crushes and get obsessive, and then i wake up and realize how stupid i am. my attraction to criss took a little longer to develop, and even our first “date” was really just two friends watching monty python. but that night changed everything. there was undeniable chemistry buzzing in the air. within a week i knew i had stumbled upon something good. and within a month i knew i loved him, and i couldn’t be with anyone else.

as weird as he may have felt about dating a college student, he pointed out that we worked partly because of my maturity, and i never felt that he was really that much older than me, just intelligent, mature and wise. so what if he was thirty-eight and i a mere twenty-two? to me, it just felt right.

and yet here i am thinking that ten years was a really long time ago, even though my boyfriend is more than half my age older than me, and that difference seems like a mere technicality. it makes no sense, but then again, i don’t make sense sometimes, and that’s just fine.

edit: i posted this a few years ago and thought it might be relevant to this post, so enjoy! i think i wrote this in high school:

Ageless

Amidst the chaos and calamity of children at play, a young girl walked through the trees in solitude, alone in an environment stuffed with stimuli and gleeful screams. Her long, graceful fingers, accented by gnarled fingernails, tugged at the branches as she climbed into the bush house, shutting herself away from the cold, cruel air as she watched the leaves that flutter violently across the horizon. The foliage separated her from her classmates, intensifying her isolation, yet shielding her from further social harm. She curled up in the cramped, awkward place as a single tear rolled down her downy cheek. She could never be one of them. She would never belong. She would always be in this hardened place … alone.

Six years later, a gangly, towering teenager standing five feet ten inches tall conversed with her history teacher on the blacktop. The sun radiated off the asphalt, kissing her pale skin as she vocalized vibrantly. Adolescent females strode arm in arm past her, not even turning to smile, but the rejection simply bounces off her back. Instead, she immersed herself in the discussion, hands slicing the humid air as she revealed another excitement in her life. Her teacher watched intently as she spilled her most precious thoughts with the natural flow of a glistening stream. Passion stirs inside her in this exchange of ideas, and she relaxed in her skin, for she knew she found her place. She could never be one of them. She would never belong. She would always be in this different place … separate.

She always felt older than her peers. Entering kindergarten the fall after her sixth birthday, her years surpassed those of her classmates, automatically making her the old one in the class. Her height failed to project her true age. In middle school, many strangers questioned her, “What college do you go to?” to which she replied, “Um, I’m not even in high school yet,” cheeks burning and blushing as the words jumped shallowly off her tongue. However, her isolation from her classmates formed the adult she grew into at an early age. With no outlet to participate in normal social activity, she turned to the only remaining people who truly listened to her: the adults. Only they accepted her. Only they understood her. Only they welcomed her into their world. And so she did what any girl in her position would do: she converted to their side. Never again would she be rejected. Never again would she fight a barrier. Now she would always be … at home.

Reborn in her newfound acceptance, she relished the attention and embraced the opportunities, surrounding herself with these mature beings, and subconsciously morphed into one of them. All traces of her teenage personality evaporated, and soon she possessed the interior mannerisms to match her exterior appearance. The gap between her and her peers stretched until the teenagers disappeared into the sunset of her child life, and the sun rose on her adult life, bathing her in the glory and satisfaction of discovering her natural self. From participating in a church choir frequented by a demographic no younger than forty-five, to expressing herself on stage as a mid-twenties mother, her transformation into an adult manifested itself with an ease she never found as a child. She was one of the adults. She could finally belong. She would always be in this natural place … surrounded by love.

She lies in front of you today, her story crying out in the ebony ink emblazoned on this page. Misunderstood yet revered, isolated yet accepted, she fulfills her role as a teenager but lives deeply as an adult. You notice her sitting alone on a planter, scribbling her latest inspiration, approach her and inquire, “How old are you?”
“I’m old. I’m young. I’m ageless.”

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