for the ones who feel older than they are

who have lived more years than their age can explain

I’ve always felt older than I am. As if, despite this being my first time living, it isn’t. When you’ve seen and experienced so many things and feelings so early on, it clings to you - it ages you more than time ever could.

“Some of us have lived whole lifetimes before we ever turn twenty.”
— T.L. Gray

I was nineteen, sitting in a window seat, the sunrise bleeding over the horizon, flying home to a hospital room that wasn’t quite ready to let my dad go. I hate hospitals, but we’d had that one thing in common at least. I was no stranger to death, to loss, or to grief. All three had come to visit me long before nineteen, settling themselves into my way of life before I could even name what I was feeling.

But there was something about this loss in particular, in which my Dad was now missing not just from this life but from me, that aged me so fiercely. My mind had aged, my heart more so and a permanent ache had come to rest inside of me.

It wasn’t an experience anyone else around me could understand, something I was both thankful for and envious of. It had made me angry, sad, confused and wary. I had lost someone - and it wasn’t the kind of lost that could become found.

Sometime after turning twenty-four, I started to feel like I was running out of time; like I’d lived beyond my means - carrying too many years for someone still so young.
It was a feeling I kept to myself because it was too heavy to explain and because I thought it might also be too heavy for someone else to understand. Afterall, how do you explain something when you can’t even find the words? And then when you do find the words, how do you lift them from out of your chest?

And yet, it hasn’t all been sorrow.

I’ve come to know deep joy, too. I’ve watched whales swim on the edge of the country, woken up to sunlight filtering through forest trees, slept in deserts, stood before waterfalls; I’ve filled my cup a hundred times over and I have lived enough to know that life isn’t just a series of losses strung together.

“Joy and pain are two ends of the same thread. To feel deeply is to know both.”
— Victoria Erickson

Over time, I’ve realised that although I may feel older than my age, that doesn’t mean it’s too late to reclaim the years that were stolen, rushed, or reshaped by things outside of my control. This feeling - of being older than I am - doesn't mean I don’t still have youth left in me, that I’m not allowed to return to softness, to silliness, to play, even if I no longer look like I belong in that space.

There are some things you don’t ever fully put down, years you can’t fully outgrow. Sometimes, we have to accept what we cannot change - and also accept the ways in which those things have changed us.

The truth is: time isn’t always linear.

Some of us experienced moments so profound, so soon. Moments filled with both pain and joy, light and dark, that they blurred together before we could even understand their impact.

Some of us are still trying to accept that we might be living things out of order, that we get to come back to the parts of ourselves we didn’t get to be and how it isn’t a step back, but a step forward.

There is no shame in returning to what we had to leave behind too soon.

---

So what does it mean to feel older than you are — and still move forward?

I think it means learning to live with the weight, without letting it steal what’s still yours. It could mean carrying what you’ve been through - all the beauty, all the ache - without letting it harden you or pull you away from the parts of life that are still waiting for you. Some days, that’s easier said than done. Some days, it’ll feel like everything you are is shaped by what you’ve already lived.

It means letting yourself exist in contradiction. Some days you’ll feel ancient - like your bones remember things your mind can’t quite place. Other days, you’ll laugh so hard it feels like nothing ever touched you at all. Both are real, both are valid. And maybe learning to live with that in-between space, not always needing to feel like one or the other, is part of what it means to move forward.

Mai i te kōpae ki te urupa, tātou ako tonu ai.
From the cradle to the grave, we are forever learning.

There is no fixed path back to yourself, no clear timeline for when you’re supposed to feel okay, or young, or present, or whole. Sometimes all we can do is return to ourselves in small ways. Quiet arrivals. Tiny recognitions. One moment at a time.

If you feel older than you are,

I hope you know that there’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing broken, nothing to fix. You’ve just lived through things that most people wouldn’t expect of someone your age. You’ve held both joy and grief in the same breath and you’ve survived moments that asked you to grow before you were ready.

You may feel out of place sometimes, like time moved differently for you. But that doesn’t mean you’re behind; it doesn’t mean you’ve missed anything. The years ahead of you still belong to you, as much as any that came before.

There is room in this life for both the weight and the wonder. There is still time to be light, to be silly, to be surprised by who you become next.

“I said to the sun
tell me about the Big Bang
The sun said, 'It hurts to become.”
— Andrea Gibson