Not 18 anymore (unfortunately)

For some reason, there are moments when I still think that I'm 18. Perhaps it goes along with my stubbornness (I think this might be my biggest flaw and a trait I need to work on) because I seem to have convinced myself that I can stay 18 forever, and then realize that in a couple of months, I will be 24 (dreading my birthday already).

I am writing about this because a couple of days ago, I injured my shoulder from either the gym and playing volleyball (yes, contrary to popular belief, injuries are pretty common in volleyball haha). Despite this injury, and the excruciating pain that has accompanied it, I forced myself to go to the gym and work around it. I guess it's pretty hard to do that when I need to use my shoulder to lift any kind of weight. If I was a normal person, I would probably have gone to the doctor by now and checked to see if it's alright or if I actually damaged something important....but ironically I hate going to the doctor's office so I've been hoping it heals on its own. I guess I keep thinking back to high school when I would injure something, and since it would heal quickly, I would just ignore the pain. But it seems like I can't do that anymore because my body doesn't seem to heal as quickly. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go to the doctor's but I think if the pain persists for a couple more days, the best thing would be for me to go.

Another incident that has led to my realization of my age: Last weekend I went to visit my high school because one of my teachers/deans/coach retired last year and there was a ceremony to have the gymnasium named after her. It was really great to see a couple of my classmates, and the teachers who surprisingly remembered me (or perhaps it's not that surprising because I was sort of a teacher's pet haha). It was then though when I realized that, wow, it's actually been six years since I've graduated high school and I'm really not young anymore (relatively speaking I guess). This is definitely a difficult topic for me because of my fear/uncomfortable feeling towards aging. It also doesn't help that I will probably not make a decent living until I'm well into my 30s, so I don't really feel like an adult yet. I hope one day though that I am able to fully accept the concept of aging and death. Until then, I guess I'll continue to convince myself that I'm an 18 year old stuck in an (almost) 24 year old body.