I was hanging out with no one under 21. I thought that if I really wanted to fit in I had to... show them that I was in a way just as adult as they were, 'cause I could hold my own just as well as they could, if not better.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I don't think I really realized what being an adult and being a real grownup was until I was at least twenty-eight.
I was always a little adult. Even as a little kid, I just couldn't understand why I was surrounded by all these kids. I took things very seriously.
I was a little adult for my age as a teenager, and I didn't feel like I socially fit in with my peers.
I never fit in as a kid. I always felt that there was something different about me.
I was an only child. I hung out with my parents.
I was raised with adults. I skipped knowing how to interact as a normal teenage person.
As a teenager, I didn't want to be me; I wanted to be many different people. Maybe I realized that they all lived inside me and that if I managed to connect with them, they would become aspects of me.
In those days, between the ages of 12 and 18 you meant nothing. You were the extra place at the side table if someone came to dinner. You were of no interest to anyone.
When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, by the time you were 16, you were kind of expected to be an adult. By the time we were 16 and able to drive, certainly by 17 or 18 and into college, you just had very little interaction with your parents.
I was having my teens in my 30s.